At the time, walkmans were trending: people would use recording devices to record the song if it played via the radio or at a concert. You would know at least one friend who has a legit copy (vinyl or cassette) “borrowing” that for the purpose of pirating music, in which that finished recording is replayed on a walkman to listen.
The invdividual uses a voice recorder, the ones with cassettes to store audio but what could happen is that you can capture other audio cues irrelevant to the song (door opening or people speaking in the background). It’s kind of volatile in that sense, unless you are in a room that’s dead silent and soundproof capturing the audio.
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)
I have boxes of mixtapes I made from the 80’s and 90’s kicking around somewhere. Some even still sounded half decent last time I fired up the cassette deck. Should get those ripped at some point. Hmmm…