8-track cartridges were perceived as “great” with its convenience factor . One can compare them as such compared to preceding tech options to vinyl but that is a low bar. .Vinyl ruled, survived, and thrives today for intuitive reasons.
They were not a mainstream popular home recorder option for the masses, and were a generally limited audio performer in a continuous tape loop fixed cartridge format, that arose and died in the 70’s (…along with CB radios…).
They were primarily designed and suited for fast tunes plunk-in convenience. (Think mostly in your cars and early era portable options) . They were not mainstream home audio performers to compete with or challenge vinyl.
By today’s standards, they were strictly low-fi, with a very dodgy build continuous tape loop that wowed and fluttered ( = further downgrade in audio playback performance), The 8-track cartridges frequently jammed and thus were frequently prone to stretch, …. and finally doomed to a high risk of getting just plain mangled rendering them to useless junk.
They were thankfully quickly superseded in analogue tape format by cassettes an improved tape loop format in all of audio performance, build, features, and utility, Cassettes finally permitted an improved home recording option for the masses and ushered in the genesis of mid-fi and early hi-fi performance level recording and playback machines.
The 8-track cartridge audio performance was generally strictly bottom level in its Jurassic era capabilities. It presented an overall uneven and spiky, and poor frequency performance curve with a severely rolled off top-end at its best. The 8-track format popularity and its very existence was short lived (…dare I say thankfully …) that appeals to a limited cohort of purely nostalgia fans.