Anyone remember the Columbia House Record & Tape Club? One of the very first pyramid scams and, yep, I was in it. It was, like, 12 tapes for a penny and that's how they got ya.
A scam perhaps, but not a pyramid scheme.
I signed up in late 1981 after I got my combo record player/cassette deck/8-track player. My original preferred format was 8-tracks (oops), and I can still name the first set of tapes I got:
Buckner & Garcia -
Pac-Man FeverThe Go-Go's -
Beauty and the BeatJoan Jett -
I Love Rock & RollJ. Geils Band -
Freeze FrameDevo -
Freedom of ChoiceSimon & Garfunkel -
The Concert at Central Park (I believe this one counted as two selections)
I don't think I ever got another 8-track, and I stuck with it for a long time, even though I think I only ever ordered anything when they were having some sort of promotion because everything was cheaper at the local record store.
The original generation of CDs back in the 80s were often just ripped from whatever source they could find. In many cases, the vinyl did sound better than the CD.
Sounded better to whom? I can't think of a single instance where I got a CD to replace a vinyl record and thought the record sounded better.
Cassettes were a horrible medium with no advantages
As compared to 8-tracks, cassettes had lots of advantages (and no real disadvantages). Cassettes rarely (if ever) had tracks fade out on one side and fade in on the other side. This was common with 8-tracks (here's an example:
https://www.discogs.com/The-J-Geils-Band-Freeze-Frame/release/7279595). 8-tracks also played in only one direction. Rewinding was not possible (because of how 8-track tapes worked mechanically), and many 8-track players lacked a fast forward button. If you had such a player and wanted to listen to "Centerfold" a second time, you had to listen through the first part of "Rage in the Cage" and then play "Freeze Frame" again. As compared to vinyl records, cassettes had the advantage of portability. Of course, once CDs became common, all of those advantages were nullified.