Digital culture saw a huge boost during the pandemic. Faced with confinement, large cultural institutions began to produce digital content and create platforms or participate in others to continue making their proposals reach their audiences. And, along the way, hopefully, conquer more distant markets. With the pandemic now converted into a nebulous dream, and despite a voracious hunger for presence, as in live concerts, digital and digitized culture is still here, making a growing flood of content available to the public, including those from new platforms such as CaixaForum, which already invests at this time the equivalent of a medium-sized physical CaixaForum, about five million annually, or what the CCCB is going to launch. And digital consumption does not stop growing.
Javier Celaya, from the consulting firm DosDoce and one of those responsible for the Digital Culture Yearbook of Acción Cultural Española, believes that the pandemic was a unique window for many people to discover this content. “Users of digital and streaming platforms multiplied by four, and when people returned to physical environments they did not stop using digital. Consumption of everything doubled. Today we see double-digit annual increases in audiobooks or podcasts. The cruising speed that digital has taken remains. The audiobook is today a 5 billion dollar industry and by the end of the decade it is expected to be 30,000 million. As for podcasts, they already have 2 billion listeners on a global scale.”
And he says that “globally, there are already 1.7 billion subscribers to all types of streaming services. And a Deloitte study predicts that this type of services will grow by 10% annually until the end of the decade.” Regarding face-to-face culture, he adds that “what the promoters have discovered is that one thing does not eliminate the other, people, if they can go to a concert, the theater or a festival, they go, but if due to time limitations, geographical or budgetary reasons you cannot go to Primavera Sound or to the opera in Madrid or Barcelona, the digital version is an excellent substitute. And a complementary source of income that is very good for them and allows them to reach new audiences. The great enemy is a new channel. Then there are contents that travel better than others, like everything audio. In cinema, music or audiobooks, preferential consumption is digital. And there are parts of the world, Latin America, Africa, where there is no infrastructure of libraries, theaters. The weight of digital will be greater to access culture.”
Even so, success goes by neighborhood. If in cinema the situation is clear and many festivals have maintained a digital window after the pandemic - the Atlántida Film Fest has achieved 150,000 spectators on the Filmin platform, says its founder, Jaume Ripoll -, the theaters, which launched themselves into digital epic in the belief that it could be a new seat, are the ones who have retreated the most. The Teatre Lliure closed its digital window, in which it offered its premieres with detailed recordings - although all its recordings since 1976, most of them simpler, are available free on demand in the new Arxiu Lliure and have their audience -, and at TNC only lasted two years in its commitment to recording the main shows of the season and offering them online. It didn't work.
On the other hand, operas work, although the management of rights is not simple. The Royal Theater launched the MyOperaPlayer platform, with content from 50 theaters and dance companies around the world, including Covent Garden and the Paris Opera, and has 3,100 subscribers and 90,000 registered users for open content. For its part, the Gran Teatre del Liceu launched Liceu Live and its commitment is clear... in the absence of reaching a rights agreement with its Orchestra and Choir. A negotiation in progress that has forced the digital subscription to be paralyzed this season.
Which does not prevent the general director of the Liceu, Valentí Oviedo, from being clear that the difference between the world's operas will be marked by whether or not they have "a digital season that in some way is the mirror of our physical season." His goal is to offer each opera on the platform from different points of view and with accessories that improve the experience. The idea is that there are subscribers who, due to their location, cannot go to the opera and "that people from the US, Mexico or France feel like high school students." During the time it operated, up to 3,000 people per opera were connected. “I think it is a necessary complement to have an international dimension and for budget balance,” he says.
In the world of digital books, an example of its good progress are the loans from eBiblio, the free online loan service for digital content that represents the majority of public libraries in the State, except Catalonia and the Basque Country: in 2022 it had 128,492 users , 10% more than in 2021, and made 2,479,854 loans, an increase of 19%. For their part, museums launch online virtual tours, free or paid, such as those of the Prado, with enormous image resolution to explore the rooms, and include audio tours from the curators.
And without a doubt one of the stars of the new era in Spain is CaixaForum, a free platform with 2,000 proposals including series, operas, documentaries and podcasts and that generates its own high-quality content. Elisa Duran, deputy general director of the La Caixa Foundation, points out that “in digital content we are surely in a very initial phase, but we believe that what makes the difference will be that technology is not considered only as a spectacular application to carry culture with 3D images, but the ability to weave stories that are interesting, apply technology to improve the story.”
And he points out that now that they have 180,000 subscribers, they know that CaixaForum attracts viewers ten years younger on average – between 45 and 55 years old – than the physical audience. And he says that if in the face-to-face cultural consumption of his proposals two thirds are women, in the digital one it is half and half. And that there is more interest in long and calm content than in short ones. “We want to connect our in-person offer with the digital one,” he says, and says that this is what is already happening with festivals that they host on their platform: “Instead of assuming competition, they add synergies.” That synergy, that hybridity, is today's characteristic.
Because the much greater digital consumption is combined with an unprecedented hunger for presence, as in live music: “If in 2022 and 2023 it could seem like a rebound effect of the pandemic, the pre-sales at this time in 2025 have no end ”says Rubén Gutiérrez, general director of the SGAE Foundation. Judit Carrera, who directs a CCCB that is going to launch a platform for its digital content, reasons that today there is “a hybridity, a link between what is in-person and virtual also in culture.” Of course, if in the pandemic "we large institutions believed that it was time to make the pending technological leap, even so I believe that the covid has ended up confirming presence, we want to be together."
They seek, he says, to prioritize presence, a meeting place, of surprise, "in this world of digital bubbles, echo chambers and metaverses", but they give a lot of importance to virtual presence: with a meeting of YouTubers for the exhibition of Quantum have had a million views. At the Cervell(s) exhibition there were 651,014 online visits, compared to 90,000 in person. An interview with the writer Ngügï wa Thiong’o achieved 18,000 views. “We have everything in three languages and the virtual platform will allow us to better disseminate the content and project ourselves internationally. And that the knowledge we generate is not ephemeral and lasts over time.”
