Looking at these excerpts:

I like listening to music so much I do it everyday, for as long as I'm near a PC. I listen to both popular soundmakers and those less popular - not because popularity matters but because I enjoy the sound the produce at the given moment.

I have a collection of music that's gigabytes long because I have varying tastes and prefer FLACs to 320 kbps MP3s due to their superior sound quality

I never talk about liking listening to music but I'd love for someone to express exactly what gets them high in the music they listen to.

And especially at this one:

I still struggle to understand why some people put "listening to music" as a hobby. It sounds like a petty excuse for having one: most of all people on the planet listen to music in some capacity; whether it's great or small doesn't matter. It's like putting "watching TV" or "shopping for groceries" under hobbies: pointless.

I can say that you care about music. You're definitely not a casual listener. And since you prefer a hi-fi audio format (and perhaps have the gear to play hi-fi music), I'm gonna take a risk and say that you are an audiophile.

As I wrote before, casual listening is the starting point. There are many routes one can take in listening to music. You can learn to play an instrument (if you don't know already), review music, play it on bleeding-edge equipment, blast it from your car... it's up to you.