Not as long as the alternatives, Yes, Worse under most conditions.

Tape might be the most environmentally susceptible modern media: changes in temperature and humidity are both very bad for it in the long term. It also actively wears out while in use. The most common issues with tape sound are hiss, wow, and flutter, all caused by the tape and tape mechanism. They are very common in older tapes. Also, no one can make a new deck with Dolby Noise Cancelling, so you need an old deck for optimum sound. 

With a lossless (.flac) electronic file you are getting more or less precisely what was recorded, save for compression artifacts. With something like an .mp3 you get even more artifacts, and some outright loss at low bitrates, but most people can't really tell the difference until you get below 256k and a good chunk are perfectly happy with 128k.