Before compact cassette you mean?
8-track is actually older, but it's not really a predecessor to anything.
It just was a cassette system like there were literally hundreds at that point.
You won't believe how many shapes and sizes of cassette there were.
8-track was never intended for recording and it wasn't capable of rewinding, so it was in most ways worse than any tapedeck. The good side is that, since there's 8 tracks (2x4 stereo tracks) on the tape, and 8-track can contain up to 88 minutes of tape, which is pretty long considering the size. This made it very suitable for car use. In the end, hifi cassette kicked the crap out of 8-track in both reliability, useability and sound quality.
Altough 8-track cought on in north america, it never really cought on anywhere else. I do have an 8-track player and a pretty big pile of 8-track cassettes, but I can tell you, most of them sound awful. But then, most prerecorded cassettes sounded pretty afwul too.
Here they are
They're pretty hard to take a picture of because they're actually stored above my stairs.
Taking this picture was actually pretty dangerous
.