What did people use before CD players were made?

Cassette tape, 8-track tapes, reel to reel tapes, vinyl LP's and 45's, wire recorders, shellac and resin records, wax cylinder, and books.

In computers a 3.5 inch diskette was used, it had a 1.44Mb capacity. It was known as a floppy disk and a 'stiffie' in Australia. Before 3.5 floppies there 6.25 floppies (that were soft and bent very easily), before the 6.25 were 12" disks also called floppies (just large versions of the 6.25"), before that there was reel-to-real and casset tape storage, before that there were keypunch cards, before that there were manual switches and vacuum tubes. And finally, before that was the abacus and the difference engine, and before that was the human brain.