tape to tape recording (aka dubbing) was a thing. It would be done in real time unless your deck had high speed dubbing, but that often resulted in a slightly poorer quality.

You could also record direct to tape from radio, LP, or CDs, so not sure why the microphone and background noise thing is an issue. Even before dual decks you could have separates where you could plug the output from one unit into the input of another.

Duplicating tapes from sources was a thing in the 80s for sure.

My dude, it was the 80s, not the dark ages. We didn't normally have to use a voice recorder to dub tapes. Component systems made taping off records, cassettes, radio, or whatever else easy. Every one of my friends had a dual cassette deck somewhere in the house.

I can't think of a single person - my grandparents included - who DIDN'T have a dubbed copy of an album or a mixtape someone has given them.

This is the third time I've seen a post on this theme in this community. I'm 100% certain that this is bot activity. It must be a common output of LLMs when asked to make posts to the fediverse. And it's always a really dumb question that makes you think they're an alien pretending to be one of us.

I had a ghettoblaster with tape-to-tape at some point in the '80s and certainly copied a couple of albums that way - but I've never really been into music that much, so it wouldn't have been many.

Prior to that we did have a horrible old mono tape recorder which I used to record some HHGTTG episodes on it's original radio transmission by standing it beside the radio and begging the family to be quiet. I may even have those tapes somewhere - for sentimental value. They were appalling quality as you would expect.

I think most people were annoyed by the radio DJ talking through an intro/outro because of recording your own mixtape. I still hear some phantom DJs in songs even though the tapes have long been lost to time.

The invdividual uses a voice recorder

No, we just used a dual tape deck. Direct dub.

What do you think all those dual cassette decks were for?

So you could make friends a copy or copy friends' music.

Perfectly acceptable at the time. Only an issue if you were selling them, but even then not a huge issue.

Yep. Pretty routinely - nobody cared. Nobody I knew played it on a Walkman or cared mch for them - having a car radio (and owning the car it was inside) was the real flex.

Listen narc, I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed on this, so you aren't outing anyone with this phishing question.

Yup sure did! It was called Columbia House. And I probably stole about $300s worth of Tapes and later CDs, save for the 1 Cent I sent them in the mail. I still have some of the CDs I ordered in a binder somewhere. The best part is, I was a kid!

yeah I started young.

in the 80s Fischer Price had a kids tape deck that had a microphone attached to it. so you could put a blank tape in it and then use the microphone to record whatever you wanted. the quality wasn't bad. so I'd make "mix tapes" for my friends of NES game soundtracks or songs off the radio. with the NES game tracks I would then try to sell the mixtape. songs from like the Batman game, Battletoads, Contra, Mega Man, etc. so I'd make the "first run" recording by holding the microphone up to the TV and then use my Dads stereo that had two decks to copy the "master" to other blank tapes and then sell them to my friends for like $1.

I'd then take the money I made and rent more games to rip the soundtracks and also buy comic books.

Bootlegs of Hendrix and Zeppelin were floating around via sneakernet on cassette tapes. I had every one I could find.

Hell, back then Sony sold machines with 2 decks in them that would copy tapes. No other reason for them to exist than piracy but apparently there was a time when Sony wasn't the archenemy of piracy.

We would find people who had shows (concerts) we wanted and send blank tapes and postage for the return. They would copy the shows and send them back. All using the mail.

Of course it wasn't piracy, the band let us record their shows, so I don't know if it counts.

Tapes were copied directly to tapes. No microphones used for the tape copying part.

I didn't because I wasn't alive back then

If you had trusted friends in school, you could each chip in half the cost of a new album/tape you wanted to get, make a copy, and you each got to listen to it at home whenever you wanted. The next time you did it, the person who got the copy would get the original.

No, I did not have access to a cassette tape recorder until 90 or 91.

Borrowing?*

Also, most stuff I copied off the radio wouldn't have background noise because you could play music and record directly to cassette. Or maybe it wasn't loud enough in my room to pick anything else up. Same when I recorded my own mixes off CD to cassette.

I had a buddy who was an audiophile (was the 80’s). He would copy all his Japanese and other import albums directly from the turntable to a fancy tape deck for me. I had oodles and oodles of pirated music that was high quality. All gone now though.

The soviets used to produce bootleg copies of Western vinyls on x-ray since the sixties.

shots

Growing up in the nineties Russia I saw quite a few in home collections all over. Beatles on a ribcage, Judas Priest on a wrist, Black Sabbath on a skull. Some of them were bootlegs of bootlegs: getting your hand on an original recording was so rare and risky.

columbia house was great; i was about 12 and got so many cds for a penny. no idea how it happened since i obviously had no bank account but not questioning

but really my dad had pretty much an entire wall of cds and cassettes in the 90s so i made so many mix tapes when i went to his house on the weekends. i guess thats kinda "pirating music" - at least as far as pre mp3s go.

also taping songs off the radio; i did that all the time to relisten to them along with recording my friends cassettes.

also we shared teddy ruxbin tapes like sugar.

I think it might be a little late for people here to start pirating songs during the 1980s.

I used to get tapes people didn't like and record over them all the time. Half my collection had one thing written on it then a piece of tape over it with what it actually was.

It was the 2000s, not the 80s, but I absolutely recorded songs off the radio and copied library tapes for later. Good times.

Mix tapes were the primary thing for me, and later burning custom CDs in the mid 90s.

I was the only one with a CD burner and I'd charge people $1 song to make them (I provided the CDs)