Koreans spend 4 hours daily watching or listening to digital content: report

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By Lee Gyu-lee

The average Korean national spends four hours per day consuming digital content, according to the report by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA).

The state-run agency released a digital content consumption trend report, Wednesday, which included the survey of 3,000 digital content users, from age 15 to 59.

The survey gathered their consumption patterns for over-the-top (OTT) streaming video platform services, online performances, metaverse services and audio content in the past year.

According to the report, the number of paid subscriptions was the highest for music streaming platforms at 3.45 on average, followed by 2.69 for online video platforms in the past year.

About 40 percent of video platform users answered they are willing to change the platforms they are currently using or to add another subscription. Of those, for the reason they want to switch platforms, “it has specific content I want to watch” had the highest percentage of responses at 52.8 percent, followed by “it has variety in content” at 20.4 percent.

About 59 percent of the participants answered that they determine which platform to use depending on the content, which was followed by the popularity of the platform at about 29 percent.

In the report, people said that they mostly consume online video, performances and metaverse content while they are resting at home ― 57.1 percent, 79.7 percent and 63 percent, respectively. Whereas for audio content, the percentage of those who listen during their commute was the highest at 28.3 percent.

The survey also revealed that there has been significant growth in people consuming online performance and metaverse services since the coronavirus outbreak. About 70 percent of online performance service users started consuming the content right after the pandemic started and about 79.3 percent for metaverse content.

Among the online performances the users consume, pop music concerts were the highest with about 72 percent, followed by musicals at 39.7 percent, classical music performances at 34.6 percent, theatrical plays at 24.6 percent, and ballet performances at 15.9 percent.

Out of the users who have watched online performances, about 33 percent viewed paid services and of those, 83.6 percent answered that they would be willing to use the paid online performance services in the future.

Regarding metaverse services, “curiosity towards the new service” had the highest proportion of responses ― 38.7 percent ― as the reason for starting the service. Of those, however, 44.4 percent answered they no longer use the service. One-time users also took up 31.8 percent.

Among the metaverse service users, when they were allowed to choose multiple answers, the reasons for using the service were: to make a profit at about 55 percent, followed by to play games at 51.4 percent, to use e-learning programs at 44.7 percent and to use exercise programs at 41.3 percent.

The full report is available on KOCCA's official website.