My mum used a reel to reel for her dance classes for a long time before cassette took over. He is right about belts perishing. I had to replace one in our record deck, but then it is pretty old.
I think I still have some cassettes, but don't have a deck set up. I had a portable mono one for storage for my BBC Micro, but that is long gone.
Tape was a convenient medium. You could pass around cassettes or VHS to friends. Of course a lot of copying went on.
Be kind, rewind.