Much has been made of the fact that a CD can be stepped on and even tossed around the room without affecting the sound. However, digital audio tapes are rugged, too. Many manufacturers have already chosen DAT players over CD players for use in cars, where rough treatment is a way of life. The answer lies elsewhere. Recordable CDs are superior to tapes because of the most elemental reason - the way they are shaped.
CDs are discs and tapes are ribbons.
Tape is fine for sequential operations - when you want to do one thing at a time, without changing the order of events. Tape is like a conveyor belt in which items come off at the end in the same order that they went on at the beginning. You can also record onto a disc at any point, any time you want to. This principle is well known in the computer world. It's also used in many regular CD players whenever the user programs the player's microprocessor memory to play the musical tracks in a non-standard order.