One billion views puts you in the same league as musicians like Drake, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles.
But one producer has reached this milestone by focusing on four-legged, furry listeners instead of humans.
Speaking from Los Angeles, Amman Ahmed tells DailyMail.com that he pioneered the idea of music for pets through a YouTube channel, playing songs and listening to comments from dog owners until he created music that actually relaxed animals.
It took advantage of a post-pandemic trend in which separation anxiety among pets worsened as animals became accustomed to spending so much time with their owners who worked from home.
Amman Ahmed began researching what music relaxes dogs and cats (Music for Pets)
The pioneering canine musician now offers dozens of playlists to relax dogs and cats and says his “creative process” is driven by his own four-legged listeners.
Hip hop fan Ahmed said: “I initially started making music to help people with insomnia, and a friend joked, ‘Let me try that on the dog.’
To begin with, Ahmed’s approach was to “experiment and generate ideas,” but more importantly, rely on feedback from dog owners about what worked and what didn’t.
“When we started, there was only a little scientific research on it,” he said. ‘So the tracks we made, some worked and some didn’t. But we have the basic idea: “Okay, maybe there’s something here.”
‘We started producing different frequencies, different types of music and, most importantly, getting as much information as possible from the dog owners, from the dogs using it, and then learning from there.
He said: “This is solely focused on how we can have a positive impact on the life of a dog and a cat.” And as long as that’s front and center, we can build around that.
“Then we started getting messages about how music was the only thing that could help the dogs with their anxiety, and how even certain songs were the ones that helped. So we built from there.”
His company, Music For Pets, was acquired by US-based Create Music Group after a surge in popularity of animal playlists, and Create now plans to invest $10 million in the company and its brands Relax My Dog and Relax My Cat.
Some dogs enjoy Music for Pets’ music so much that they rely on it to relax every day, and one dog even had a song played at his funeral, Ahmed said.
Music For Pets has playlists for dogs and cats (and has experimented with creating music for guinea pigs and hamsters) and Ahmed said users rely on them to deal with separation anxiety in dogs or when taking them to the bathroom. animal to the vet.
The company has received feedback from owners who say music can help with everything from canine depression to hyperactivity in cats.
He says the company now has “superfans” who rely on music to calm their animals.
He said: “We got a message saying, ‘My dog really loved this track.’ It was the only thing that helped them with their anxiety for years and my dog recently passed away. Can I use our dog’s funeral music as a way to remember? That really left me speechless.”
The company has experimented with using sounds that only animals can hear, but above all it tries to create music that both dogs and humans enjoy.
Ahmed said: “It is always divided in half, because both the dog and the human will consume it, knowing that if the human consumes it and the human is relaxed, that energy also passes to the dog.” We have always had both in mind.
Subscriptions to the service cost $4.99 a month and more than 42 million animals have tuned in, the company says.
The service offers music and videos adapted to dogs and cats (Music for Pets)
Cats are difficult customers, admits Ahmed (Alamy)
The company also produces videos aimed at dogs and cats, and has now recorded videos in Los Angeles, Barbados and Portugal, among others (some of them in the form of “virtual walks”) and others with drone footage.
Ahmed says that while creating music that dogs respond to is relatively easy, entertaining cats is a much more difficult job (and it’s also difficult to determine whether cats enjoy the music).
He said: ‘Cats are a very, very complicated audience. We took the same approach with Relax My Cat, but there’s a lot more guesswork, because you never actually own a cat and they’re obviously very stubborn too.’
“We’ve experimented a little with guinea pigs, hamsters and rabbits, but that’s even more difficult.”
He says he now hopes to expand his team, create more content and forge new partnerships.
He said: ‘I always love keeping that idea at the center of the lives of the pets we’ve touched, those stories, knowing that this is the impact we have. I am also a dog lover.
Ahmed says he previously launched a music business (for humans) in his native Britain, which failed, which taught him many lessons and influenced the approach he took with Music for Pets.
He said: ‘I grew up in an environment that wasn’t the best, and I managed to get out of university and somehow start a business.
“When you grow up in a difficult environment, things can go both ways: it can have a negative impact, or you can take the positive out of all the negative experiences and ultimately it helps you be positive in life.”