[ghaff]

I don't think that's generally true. As someone who was in college during the vinyl era, although I created mix tapes and taped vinyl that others owned, I never did a lot of purchasing of pre-recorded cassettes and I think my behavior was pretty common. Certainly, the "record stores" of the era carried far more vinyl than cassettes.

[ska]

Fair, but didn't that change once CD players showed up in cars? Some people were certainly buying up loads of tapes (but they did wear out, so some repeats?)

[ghaff]

This suggests that cassettes were never a hugely important medium--maybe in the 80s for a while for the reason you suggest?

https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...

Another chart is this one but it's hard to parse. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...

In any case, pre-recorded cassettes were always a pretty small part of the mix.

[ska]

interesting!