Humans and animals have many things in common, including their common attraction to music. Dogs, cats and other domestic beasts also appreciate the fourth art. What create a new promising market in the field of “pet business”.
Create Music Group, an American company specializing in music distribution, has taken its first steps into the music business for pets by acquiring Music for Pet, for an undisclosed sum. This company, founded in 2017 by Amman Ahmed and Ricardo Henriquez, offers songs and other entertainment content for pets.
A moment of relaxation
A surprising idea but which seems to have found its audience. Indeed, the two brands of Music for Pet, Relax My Dog and Relax My Cat, accumulate more than twelve million hours of listening per month, according to the specialized site Music Ally. They would also affect more than twenty million animals around the world.
But what does the music intended for our two or four-legged friends sound like? All in all, to any background music. The Relax My Dog YouTube channel offers live a whole sound universe conducive to relaxation in doggies, like a radio. Some soothing videos that it hosts last ten, fifteen or even twenty hours, which does not prevent them from reaching a large number of Internet users and their doggies. This YouTube channel has 1.47 million subscribers, compared to 818,000 for that of Relax My Cat.
Different musical tastes depending on the animals
Music For Pet isn’t the only player in the music business bringing music to our millions of pets. Streaming services are full of playlists aimed specifically at canines and felines. On Spotify, Relaxmydog has 59,556 monthly listeners, and 102,823 for Relaxmycat. The latter has, among its catalog, titles with millions of plays, very focused on relaxation and rest, such as “Relax My Cat” and “Deep Sleep Tones”. The most popular songs with dogs whose owners use Spotify put more emphasis on escape and tranquility, such as “Meditation Dog”, “Paz y Amor” or “Mar de Tranquilidad”.
Should we see this as a sign that dogs and cats do not have the same taste in music? In any case, this is what several scientific works on the subject confirm. Researchers at the American University of Wisconsin-Madison found in 2015 that felines seem to ignore “human” music. They are, on the contrary, much more sensitive to the “music” composed especially for them. Surprisingly, dogs have much more diverse musical tastes than their historical enemies. They seem to enjoy classical music but also reggae and soft rock, as revealed by a 2017 study in the journal Physiology & Behavior. Small problem, however, with the heavy-metal that irritates them more than anything else, according to research published in 2012 in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior.
Either way, music for pets has the potential to become a thriving market in the pet business. The latter could weigh, on its own, the trifle of 500 billion dollars by 2030, according to estimates by Bloomberg Intelligence. Because the affection you have for your pet or tomcat is priceless, which pushes pet owners to multiply the expenses to satisfy their little companion. Clothing and accessories, health care, insurance, connected objects, dining out… Nothing is too good for these adorable furballs. Music for pets is part of the same logic and could thus become a good vein in the years to come.
