For the vast majority of users music is only a hobby.

I've been making beats for about 20 years. For me music is essentially a diary that others occasionally read.

I'll never make a nickel off this.

Also if I buy a 2000$ microphone I own it forever and I can even sell it and maybe recoup half.

Vs paying 200$ a year forever.

Plus FL Studio is about 300$ once for the All Plugins edition.

pirate the software if you don’t plan to use it professionally?

You can easily get some older version and play around with that for free.

In my case I bought a launchpad many years ago and for a long time used the Ableton Lite version that came with it. Was more than enough for hobby usage.