Amongst other things it dependend on the country.

As a kid in 1980s Portugal, I used to go to a store selling software for the ZX Spectrum (which loaded the software from audio tapes) where the guy just had a bunch of tape copiers and would copy the game as you waited. This was in the outskirts of Lisbon, so hardly an out of the way place.

Good thing too - that's how I got my hands on an Assembly compiler and decompiler (this was before the GNU tool suite) and really started my way into programming.

So it was de facto legal enough that somebody could have an actual store doing it.

Snitches get stitches.

We all taped the radio. If we ran out of cassettes we’d get sticky tape and put it over the hole at the top to allow recording over recorded stuff we didn’t want

A friend of mine spent weeks creating a single cassette mixtape off pausing recording while songs were being played.

Not only legal, this was an old way of distributing software.

In the early 1980s, engineers over at the Dutch broadcasting organization Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) had this fantastic idea of distributing computer programs over the radio

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/04/people-once-downloaded-games-from-radio.html?m=1

Yeah, it would be fair use. Selling the tape would be illegal tho.

No, it was not legal. Did I give a fuck. Nope.

Had an audiophile buddy who bought tons of Japanese import vinyl records which he would burn(copy) to tape for me. Later on to CD then even later to DVD’s. Many years later bought tons of original CD’s at flea markets at rock bottom prices. Mainly got them for the artwork. Was not ever worried about the illegality of it.

Edit: I also have a boatload of .flac rock songs and oldies I downloaded as well and have stashed away.

Call the feds