Spotify for Spot

Pet playlists cultivated for individual breeds

Pet owners of the world: Spotify wants you to know it sees you — and your furry beloved — and is acknowledging the range of emotions that come with your version of parenthood.

No longer should you toil over whether your best bud likes Adele as much as you, nor should you feel guilt over the separation anxiety your cat or dog or even lizard may be experiencing while you work off your own tail for hours every day. Your pets might be alone, but they won’t be lonely. There’s a Spotify playlist for that.

The popular music-streaming service announced it developed an algorithm to curate “pawfect” playlists that serve the soothing needs of you and your pet, as long as your pet is a dog, cat, bird, hamster or iguana. Its five-step process asks pet owners to identify their animal’s breed and select on a sliding scale whether they are relaxed or energetic, shy or friendly and apathetic or curious.

The final step includes telling Spotify your pet’s name and uploading a picture of its cute face. Then the streaming site’s algorithm says it is “syncing your taste” and spits out a playlist.

A Spotify representative said the streaming company consulted with musicologist David Teie, a cellist with America’s National Symphony Orchestra who pioneered species-specific music and composed two albums of music for cats. Teie’s expertise informed the calculation, like how dogs don’t like low-register tunes because they can be threatening.

“An energetic dog might get a playlist with tracks that are upbeat while a shy cat might get something with slower tempos,” according to a news release.

Spotify said pets seem to prefer classical and soft rock. A survey of 5,000 animal lovers from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain and Italy found 71 per cent of owners play music for their pets and 70 per cent consider the emotional well-being of their pets every day. Sixty-nine per cent of pet owners sing to their animals, and 57 per cent dance with them.

And more than half of pet owners surveyed said they would pick their pet over a human partner if forced to choose.

Spotify concedes pet music “isn’t an exact science” but said the goal is to build upon the “true connection” pet owners feel between their “beloved animals and music.”