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.
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.
I haven’t seen the term sneakernet in forever
Feel like these days there it’s pretty rare to hand carry any kind of digital format
Airgapped networks are still pretty common in certain cases. Sometimes for testing stuff at work I have a segregated virtual network that isn’t strictly airgapped, but I still have to move virtual media back and forth with my virtual sneakers.