“…hip-hop owes much of its early development and propagation to an underground economy that the record industry didn’t understand or capitalize on.”
https://www.spin.com/2024/02/cassettes-tape-trading-hip-hop/
SPIN · How Cassettes and Tape-Trading Shaped Hip-Hop’s Early Years - SPINThese tapes and the underground, tape-trading economy played a vital role in documenting and spreading the music nationwide