Free codecs without patent issues were limited to things like Vorbis which never got wide support. There were FOSS codecs for patented algorithms, but those had legal issues in places that enforce software patents.
Pre-Spotify, MP3 players would usually only ship with MP3 support (thus the name), so people would only rip to MP3. Ask any millennial and most of them will never have heard of Ogg.
Pre-Spotify (and pre-iPod) there were plenty of cheap MP3 players that also supported Ogg Vorbis. I owned one, for example. Obviously MP3 was THE standard, but Vorbis reached a good adoption HW wise (basically because it was free as in beer to implement)
