Or they made copies of friend's records ("ripping"). the CD-R drive has been around for 2 decades now, and came as a default option on many laptops and desktops in the early 2000s. And before that, people had CD/Casette Boomboxes where you could record CD tracks to the cassette. It was the only way to make mix tapes.
I remember the days of ripping CDs borrowed from friends on a 4x speed drive; back then, you could do 8x but there was a risk of file corruption/recording failure.
I completely forgot about this set of practices. Yes, a huge part of youth culture concerned itself with the creation and sharing of mix tapes. Looked at through this lens it makes me almost wistful thinking about the mix CDs I exchanged with friends in high school. They took a fair amount of work to put together and were often deeply personalized for the receiver. Makes you wonder who’s missing out, us or “kids these days.”
Yeah, those were the days of making mixes for actual events, like road trips, relationship anniversaries, etc; these would be highly personal mixes, with inside jokes and obscure references. Now the trend has shifted to becoming an influencer with public playlists.
I remember the days of ripping CDs borrowed from friends on a 4x speed drive; back then, you could do 8x but there was a risk of file corruption/recording failure.