Back in the day, prerecorded tapes sucked enough that I preferred to transfer from LP (or later, CD) onto good blanks. Generally, I’d try to fill any extra tape at the end with as many “singles” as I could fit. I was surprised that I never lost a tape to a hungry transport, but that wasn’t far from my mind as a secondary reason to make my own tapes. I can certainly remember my folks’ 8-track player eating the occasional cartridge.
Now, 8-track was a format that died a well-deserved death. It wasn’t just the wear-prone continuous loop tape, the integrated pinch roller that would turn to goo, and crumbling pressure pads, it was also the <fade out> CLUNK! <fade in> in the middle of songs, the lack of fast forward or rewind, and the songs in the wrong order.
