[firecall]

Agreed.

I was there for the late 80s and 90s and my personal experience is mixed!

Now if a CD fails with a horrible scratch, it fails completely sometimes.

However, CDs often got kicked around the interior of cars for months and you could pick them up, wipe them off, give them a polish and they’d still play!

Tape would degrade naturally through usage.

Tape twists and stretches. Tape players can and would destroy tapes.

We never purchased new cassette tape audio. It was purely a portable disposable medium for the original Vinyl or CD. A way to copy music and play it in the car!