For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage.
Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.
I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good.
You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch).
I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.
They we never common from what I know. However again the context is people who care about sound quality and in that group I believe they were much more common.
Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.