Well I'm not sure I can respond to all that but let me just say I know people come in many different stripes of music appreciation. I know people who never listen to music for its own sake, they only use it as a backdrop for driving or housecleaning or a party. Such people do not use headphones. (My wife self-admittedly belongs in this category, btw). I also know music-lovers who listen to music as a constant backdrop to their day and who carefully curate their playlists etc, but who have no concern about audio quality. They are just as happy listening to a song through the iPhone screen speaker as to a nice stereo. Then there are music-lovers who can appreciate high-quality audio but do not require it to enjoy music playback. In my experience a lot of musicians fall into this group. Finally there are music-lovers who would just as soon not bother to have music playing unless they are listening to high-quality playback, because they can't stand it otherwise. I put myself in this latter category.
I think that there is also a group of "audiophiles" who actually don't love music, they just buy audiophile-grade recordings to use to listen to their equipment. This is a particularly interesting attitude but who am I to judge? I am not a snob in the sense that I don't give a darn which of these stripes anyone falls into. I don't preach or convert or proselytize or complain about other people's choices, as many audiophiles do. But I think it would be disingenuous to try to insist that everyone is really the same in these respects. If failing to do so is "snobbery" then so be it.
On the subject of Hotel California, I still love the song and its original vinyl master, in spite of it being played so many times. I think that compared to modern radio pop it has a very delicate sound and a good dynamic range. I do think that it is musically interesting, here's a snippet about why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California#Harmonic_structure
