>>106018505
The two biggest problems I saw were people using C-120 (or heaven help them, C-240) cassettes, which were so thin that they often get snagged into the cassette player's mechanisms or would simply break, while the other big problem was using a tape deck that they also used for playing music. Music cassettes got traded around, put in filthy decks, and would spread around all manner of gunk, magnetic and otherwise. That would damage the data cassettes played in those decks.
You probably saw some of pic related, where computer magazines sometimes would include a program on a thin vinyl record. While you could in theory hookup the turntable's output directly to the computer's audio input, those records would quickly wear out so it was best to transfer to a cassette first.