The times pitch comes up semi-regularly is when I’m asking my wife about a word in isolation. And she’ll correct the way I said it. But it’s usually a word that I won’t retain anyway. It may have come up on the tv in a headline or something.
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Probably the same reason why non-native speakers of English rarely speak English correctly. Most people aren’t trying to become TV announcers. Just trying to become proficient. In my case, it’s never even been on my radar. I’m sure I have an accent and unlikely to be mistaken for a native Japanese but I’ve never had issues being understood that I’ve traced back to pitch accents. Considering I don’t even have the Joyo kanji memorized after all these years, pitch accents are way down on the list for me to spend time and effort on.
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I speak with native Japanese teachers relatively regularly, albeit not at length, and they’ve never mentioned not understanding what I mean because of pitch. And they know I want to know that sort of thing. Either what I say is understandable enough with context, or they’re doing all the work to understand me so that I can keep speaking poorly. 
Either way, seems like I don’t need to worry too much.
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I would say OP that, putting aside the usefulness of pitch accent, the answer to your question is probably yes. It is easier to learn pitch accent as you are learning vocabulary. In fact, the additional effort to learn pitch accent at the time you are learning the word is minimal. You can acquire most of it passively (not needing to memorize the patterns for every word and colocation combination), but it first requires a bit of ear training, and a lot of attentive listening. Essentially, just being aware that pitch accent exists and listening for it gives you a lot of it. You can acquire some of it naturally through simple exposure, but you will acquire much more with focused practice.
The effort required to learn pitch accent after the fact, as many people suggest doing, is why many people think pitch accent is difficult in the first place. Let’s say you’ve already learned over 10,000 words and have been stringing sentences together for awhile. In order to acquire pitch accent at that point, you would need to actively study the pitch patterns of those words and their colocations. You’re basically manually updating your entire index of Japanese to include pitch pattern. You can still do the listening exercises and attentive listening, but you will be fighting against all of the experience you have in using the language without pitch accent up to that point.
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My thought is, it might not be that hard to hear pitch while listening; but remembering vocabularies based on Kana readings, and pitch would quickly be forgotten, unless it is somehow annotated. Not to mention that when spoken, Kana can also be somehow misheard as well. I don’t think pitch is the only pronunciation/listening difficulties.
Personally, I practically annotate mostly only nouns (and suru verbs).
So, listening is eventually a must; and I think pitch should be annotated, to help remember visually.
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I like the idea of annotated pitch pattern, but I don’t think it’s an extra thing people need to memorize. Just being shown the pitch pattern while learning the word goes a long way.
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Just giving an update on another thing I’ve just realized that makes things a bit easier when it comes to pitch:
I think most words that have over 3 syllables/kana, e.g. a word like 下さい are either Heiban, Nakada, or Odaka. And these 3 pitch accents are quite similar in sound. I also read that most of the 4 kana words are Heiban. Often, Odaka is said like Heiban anyways as the last, lowest particle of Odaka is often blank/unspoken (only considered when combining with other words)
So in my reviews, when I see a word that has 3+ syllables/kana, I can say it in my head with the pitch of something close to Heiban, Nakada, or Odaka. Usually, I just guess it to be closer to Heiban which is: first kana is low > next kana(s) high > last kana(s) are a half-step lower (slightly lower; not dropping to as low as the first kana).
I don’t think many of these longer words use Atamadaka - and if they do, the pitch doesn’t sound too off if you say it with Heiban. If it is quite different, I’ll make a note of that for that specific word.
So for 3+ syllable/kana words, this is kind of a pattern that I recognized and therefore makes it easier to get kind of close to guessing the correct pitch (instead of having to build into my mnemonic/story the pitch color as I described above for every 3+ syllable/kana word).
Atamadaka words are usually just 1 or 2 syllables/kana. So, when it comes to 1 or 2 syllable/kana words, do I try to remember if it is Atamadaka (go down in pitch) or Heiban (go up in pitch). These shorter words can only be either Atamadaka or Heiban. And are what matter for words like はし which can either be chopsticks/edge/bridge depending on the correct pitch. Perhaps most of the 1 or 2 syllable/kana words are Heiban so I can guess saying the word with that pitch - then if I see it is actually Atamadaka, I’ll make a note of that.
So a more efficient method, I think, is to just note if a word is Atamadaka (by including the color “red” into my mnemonic/story - because red symbolizes Atamadaka “going down in pitch” for me).
And for every other word, just say it with Heiban (I’ll just make a note if a word sounds much different than a typical Heiban).
Perhaps WaniKani should mention this somewhere - reading the Dogen article, YouTube videos, etc. were pretty advanced and complicated. I suppose the influencers talking about pitch make it sound more complicated than it should be just so you buy their course (which I understand as a sales tactic). But WaniKani could help beginners with pitch just by saying what I realized:
…just note if a word is Atamadaka (by including the color “red” into my mnemonic/story - because red symbolizes Atamadaka “going down in pitch” for me). And for every other word, just say it with Heiban (and just make a note if a word sounds much different than a typical Heiban).
Then, there can be a link to a more advanced explanation of pitch, e.g. Dogen articles, videos etc. That is much easier than several long articles and videos on pitch. Would be good to know for noobs like me.
Will update again in the future with any new discoveries!
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Just giving another update. I find but adding the color pitch thing to be too complicated and slows down my learning of all the kanji. So instead, I’m just going to speak in a monotone/neutral/flat pitch. I heard that tip from someone, if you don’t know the pitch, just speak flat. Over time I will remember and say words with correct pitch I suppose. Especially when I start learning full sentences, the pitch of individual words can change depending on the next particle.
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