Pet-Specific Playlists on Music Streaming Services Are a Thing. Do Cats and Dogs Like Them?

There comes a time in any pet parent’s life when they must ask: Does my dog really and truly like Mötorhead? Are they as happy as they look when “Ace of Spades” comes on? Or are they just happy I seem so happy to hear it? In today’s tense and hyper-connected homes, these questions aren’t as idle as they might sound.

Although most of us live in a constant stream of algorithm-sourced digital audio, we misunderstand music’s effect on its four-legged, passive consumers. Major companies that make gestures towards pet-friendly music seem to be a bit confused on the issue as well. 

When it launched its Pet Playlist feature four years ago, Spotify shared results of a study that found, among other highly scientific data points, that 71 percent of pet parents play music for their pets; one in five named them after a musician (Elvis, Bowie, Ozzy); and, tellingly, 55 percent think their pet likes the same kind of music they do. Yet I doubt my iguana, Phil, loves his specially-formulated Spotify playlist for two reasons: 1) Its selections are based on my answers to questions about him. 2) Dude’s an iguana. There are now over 20 years of research on music and (warm-blooded) animals’ wellbeing, which has found its way into more appropriate products.

Vet. behaviorist Dr. Lisa Radosta became an advisor to Zoundz Music for Pets, whose founder is a music-business veteran, through career-long efforts in treating animal anxiety. “What I like about Zoundz is that they took science that’s already published and jumped off from it to create species specific music,” Dr. Radosta says. With its Harmony Project, Zoundz produces music for animal shelters, which is where the earliest studies like this took place. 

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Shelter dogs react positively to classical music.

“At first, they compared shelter dogs’ behavior when exposed to heavy metal, classical music, and no music,” Dr. Radosta recalls. “They found dogs sleeping better to classical music. Then they began collecting more physical data — heart rate variability, cortisol levels in saliva — and found that classical music is better than pop and other genres, but that audiobooks, where someone’s reading, is even better.” Since then, studies have monitored these physical parameters in police dogs, shelter dogs, home dogs, along with dogs and cats in veterinary settings.

One 2015 study of cats undergoing surgery found that when the cats wore noise-canceling headphones — one set with classical music, one without — those with classical music needed less anesthesia. In vet settings, studies found relatively little effect on the animals but distinct effects on their owners. “If you’re a calmer pet parent, you’ll parent better,” says Dr. Radosta, who though she uses Zoundz Sounds for Pets in her clinic now, used classical music there 20 years prior. “Because, number one, it calms the pet parents. And number two, it calms the doctors — although I did have one doctor who was really annoyed by the music.” 

When it comes to helping pets who struggle with noises at home, Dr. Radosta advises something stronger: “Whether it’s fireworks, thunder, or something the dog’s phobic about, use white noise, brown noise, or other ambient sounds.” She adds that the next frontier in this space is to make music for species beyond dogs and cats.

“Right now, we in the animal behavior world are most interested in species-specific music,” she says. “Whether or not these different tracks with music best-suited to that animal in that environment have benefits. And there’s evidence that they do.”

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Certain frequencies are more comforting to pets than others.

Author and animal sound behaviorist Janet Marlow came to this field from a purely musical background, as a self-described “fifth-generation” heir to classical music’s famed Spivakovsky family of virtuosos.

“My ear has always been drawn to the magic of sound and resonance,” she says. “So, it was natural to appreciate the acute hearing of animals.” Also a lifelong pet lover, she’d noticed how soothed her dogs and cats seemed during her practice sessions and, prompted by grief at losing one, began exploring animals’ music response, eventually founding Pet Acoustics to create species-specific music. She researched frequencies that would upset her dogs or cats, as well as those that calmed them.

These tracks reduce those sonic triggers common to human listening — very high or low frequencies, excessive dynamics, sudden percussive shifts — and work in the comfort zone of these different animals’ auditory hardware.

“Pressure in the ear determines their behavioral response to sound,” Marlow says. “Dogs hear twice as much as humans, cats three times as much." That is some 65,000 hertz compared to our 20,000. They also listen at one or two feet from the ground, a world of vibrations and resonance that simply doesn’t make it to our ears. 

“Dogs and cats prefer long, sustained phrases,” Marlow says. “Sort of, ‘Just put me in that canoe on that gentle river and I’m gone and dreaming for the next few hours.’” Horses on the other hand, prefer “short melodic phrases,” says Marlow, who reports seeing them move in their stalls to her music. “Very strong rhythms, in 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 time.” Although she leaves iguanas to Spotify, Marlow has found a surprisingly responsive audience for her avian music. “Birds are actually the most musical of all four,” Marlow says. “They get very attached to their owners through conversations, and without it, loneliness creates neurosis.”

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Why do pets like music?

So, do animals actually like what we play them, or are they just acting calm as a result of observing us listen to music? Recent science says our bond is even more telepathic than we’d realized. “Emotional contagion is real,” Dr. Radosta says. “Realer than we thought even five years ago. I don’t mean social facilitation. I mean, a dog or cat’s automatic adoption of our emotional state. I wouldn’t have said that five years ago because I’m so worried about people misunderstanding their pets. It’s one of the major causes of relinquishment, euthanasia. Misunderstanding what this dog or cat is, what it’s capable of.”

Many in the animal space are moving away from anthropomorphic projection, into the actual sensory experience of the animals themselves. “Animals often become our entertainment,” Marlow reflects.

But when it comes to their health, wellbeing, and needs, she recommends moving beyond the superficial — listening to not just to them, but listening like them when we hear music or anything else. “Personally, I feel that the best thing going for humans these days will be an evolutionary understanding of animals. If we understand them, we will better understand ourselves.”