I'm dating myself a little, but when I started out in radio, we played 45s. Often the 45s would get scratched, so we'd have to get the record company to send us another one, which they were always happy to do. Sometimes we'd get three or four of them.
We eventually started copying them onto what's called a “cart”; it's like an eight-track tape. So we were transferring them to tape to play on the air.
Again, there was never any rights issue at the time.