It still exists, you just need to know where to look. But if you want speakers, it does get expensive to get good ones.
Soundbars can be good, if you have a reasonable one and link it to a sub or two. Surround systems can be expensive too but price doesn't mean quality.
I am sure there is plenty of snake oil salesmen in the Audio Visual space, plenty of eager buyers who don't know anything.
Bluetooth was sold as the easy alternative but the drawbacks were never mentioned before suddenly everyone has crappy Bluetooth speakers that sound like phone speakers, muddy as hell.
Even I have one and I expect it sounds exactly like it looks
brothers joke Xmas present one year. I never used it.
Wired music is better until BT is actually lossless and doesn't include a mode that swaps back to lossy if the bandwidth isn't high enough. Pass.