Pinoys listen to music 126 minutes a day, longest globally

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos not only spend the most time on the internet and on social media, they listen to music the longest anywhere on the planet.

The time spent by Filipinos listening to music, at an average of 126 minutes or a little over two hours a day, is the longest in the world, according to a study conducted by the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP).

“Music is more than a means of entertainment – it is the people’s way to communicate feelings, resonate their stories and build on their emotions,” says Dr. Maria Alexandra Chua, a professor at the University of Sto. Tomas Conservatory of Music who leads NRCP’s Musika Pilipinas project.

And yet, as important as music is in these islands, more than half of Filipinos in the industry earn less than P20,000 a month, the NRCP study found.

The meager earnings are a little over the minimum wage in Metro Manila, says Chua, who is also with the UST Research Center for Culture, Arts and the Humanities.

This is reflected in the small share of music in creative revenues.

The gross value added of the country’s creative industry expanded from P1.61 trillion in 2022 to P1.72 trillion in 2023, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. Music’s contribution is only P18.1 billion or 8.8 percent of the creative total.

The NRCP Musika Pilipinas project is designed to remedy this, defining the scope of the music ecosystem from publishing, recording and live music to the industry value chain. It will identify and assess market capital of music goods, particularly in the pivotal transformation to digital platforms, and determine growth prospects.

The NRCP study covered 700 industry players, and data was gathered from focus group discussions with artists, music company executives and organizations.

The study found that 61.1 percent of Filipinos involved in music creation, production, distribution and consumption were college degree holders; majority of them were freelance artists.

Most of the respondents said that to support their living expenses, they earned income not related to the music industry.

“Local artists would always have to go through what we normally identify as sariling sikap, that is,