I'm a proud audiophile. For me it was always about the music.
These are not incompatible pursuits. In fact, they pair rather nicely.
As a kid I was amazed by music on the cheap radio we had. And then when I listened on headphones, it was a whole other world full of details I couldn't hear on the cheap radio speaker. And it made me fall in love with music even more.
As an adult I spend a few years learning about the gear and making various purchases, even building my own speakers from kits. Did I like tinkering with the gear? Yeah, that was kind of fun, but it was largely a means to an end, which was the music.
The unfortunate fact is that music lovers who don't think about the gear are getting a crappy version of the music. If you know what you're doing, you can get some pretty world-class sound for well under a grand or even a few hundred bucks. If not, you get a Bluetooth speaker for the same amount of money that sounds like garbage and sucks the life out of your music.
You can still enjoy music that way! Many do! I sure can! But it's like wandering through the Louvre with filthy, smudged glasses. If you really like the art, it's worthwhile to clean those things off so you can really see what you're looking at.