Actually, cassette tapes did have obvious, specific problems. They degraded. The tape kept falling out. The quality wasn't very good. Fast-forwarding and rewind

Actually, cassette tapes did have obvious, specific problems. They degraded. The tape kept falling out. The quality wasn't very good. Fast-forwarding and rewinding wasn't great. CDs solved that. Then people wanted to take more of their music on the go, and MP3 players solved that. Look at DVD -> Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray has not had a good adoption. For most people, they don't see the difference between digital and HD (see the number of people who incorrectly tune their TVs to not use the HD channels on their HD TV). All the pain points were solved by VHS -> DVD.