Is the "analog hole" still an issue for music, now that all-you-can-eat streaming services have become the norm? Is anyone using their 3.5mm jack to capture a Spotify stream?
Every day I plug my phone (or tablet) into my kitchen DAB radio's auxiliary socket to listen to stuff I play on these devices whilst cooking, sitting round the table chatting with friends or just staring out the window watching the birds in my garden. I guess for me it's less about "capturing" streams but that every audio/amp device in my house, that's attached to speakers, has a line-in cable with 3.5mm jack on the end.
Not having an analogue hole would be a right royal pain in the arse.
I have a car that does. My last phone would play audio on it for about 30 seconds and then immediately disconnect. On a previous version of the firmware it would reliably panic and reboot after ~20 minutes of playing music. It worked fine with other speakers but there was something"magical" going on between it and the car.
While streaming music currently gives lots of music for cheap, it is doing because it is competing with piracy. And efforts to control piracy are a bit hampered because of the potential to use the "analog hole" (if you could only get a given song with analog recording of Spotify, then people would do it).
Further, a lot of the anti-piracy impulse is not simply a desire to charge get more money from everyone but a desire for control. Essentially, the music industry is reconciled to most people paying little for their music (or better yet, most people forced to hear advertising mixed with their music) but the industry want to have the ability to sell to people at a variety of levels. Perhaps charge more for just released music or certain artists or music connected to movie sound-tracks or for "audiophile level" audio or whatever.
For a commodity that's infinitely reproducible, the ideal position is being able to separately charge each consumer exactly what they're willing to pay. Maximum utility for the owner, which would imply minimum utility for the buyer.
Not having an analogue hole would be a right royal pain in the arse.
[edited to fix my english]