When my wife and I got married in 1976, we bought the top of the line PC Penney Stereo receiver. It played 45 & 33 rpm records, 8 track tapes, and cassettes. It also had the 4 speaker set of 24" high "tower" speakers with 3 speakers each. That thing rocked, according to these two young kids of 19 & 20 yo.
We had a pretty big collection of both sizes of records, and a big collection of 8 tracks, but cassettes were pretty new at the time, so we had a limited supply of those. We also went to a place that had live bands every weekend. I also had a top of the line under dash 8 track player attached to a pair of ti-axle speakers on the rear window deck in my car.
Over the years the stereo was changed to reflect the times, and the recording method, until about 20 years ago. Things other then music had a higher priority. These days, neither of my 2 hot rods have any form of musical equipment in them, and my wife's car has what ever was popular in 04, the CD player part of it quit working a few years ago, so its mostly just the radio now.
I did buy a really cheap MP3 player a few years ago, but I was too cheap to get an online music download connection (not sure I'd be smart enough to figure that out anyway). I did a few (very bad) recording sessions of music, but they don't sound real good. I play them every once in a while, through cheap headphones, to remind my self how cheap I am. I seldom even listen to the radio anymore.