"His hobby is listening to music."
Translation:他的爱好是听音乐。
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You bring up a good point about how 在 is used to emphasize the present continuous ("-ing") tense for verbs! However, in this case, "listening to music" is actually not a verb, but a gerund, so it acts as a noun. His hobby IS "something", and that something could be any noun: needlework, basketball, gaming, listening to music, etc. It makes more sense to consider the hobby a noun, therefore no need for 在 at all. If we were to use 在, it would actually say 他的爱好在听音乐 which literally means "His hobby (the hobby itself) is listening to music". Then we'd have to ask: how can a hobby listen to music? So 在 shouldn't be used for these kinds of sentences.
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Listening isn't used as continuous time here, it's an infinitive and therefore it can be exchanged with "to listen". Hence why 在 isn't used
nowadays the word 爱好 might be translated better as passion then as hobby."my passion"is often used in places where hobby would have been the word in the past, but moreover,爱 we all know means to love, referring also to sexual love, but most of us don't know that the word 好, when pronounced in the fourth tone as it is here, means to have a passionate feeling for, as a mother for her child (look at the character, female and child, and "to lust for"... So I'd say pretty clearly the word actually means passion.