Why not magnetic tapes in stead of vinyl records?

The real reasons were pretty simple if you think about it and they were durability and production oriented. You can not mass transfer from tape to tape. To high speed dub from tape to tape, you lose frequency response. Significantly so depending on the speed. Secondly, the vinyl can be mass produced depending on your pressing capacity. For instance, a 45 minute session to replicate 1:1 from tape for maximum fidelity would take 45 minutes....maybe 2:1 would be negligible loss of frequency which would take the transfer to 22.5 minutes. It might take 30 seconds more or less for good vinyl....you can see real quickly that it is simply a matter of economics. The second reason is tapes degrade over time whereas most vinyl is stable indefinitely. Regards.

Onhwy61, the prerecorded cassette transfers were done high speed and suffered terribly from reduced frequency response. Cassette was a dictation medium and its performance was never even close to reel to reel. Someone above mentioned Tandberg but serious reel folks coveted Revox or its professional twin brother Studer. Any audiophile at that time was buying the album and taping it for themselves. The ONLY reason cassette was a viable format was portabilty. The walkman, every car came with a cassette deck.....then the cd. Cassettes hung around until cd became portable, then kaput!