Adding Music to an Instagram Story

Instagram is an interactive platform where you can live stream, take pictures, apply filters, and even add music to a story. At first, Instagram’s wide array of features may seem like a lot. On a single Instagram story, you can create a layout, boomerang, or text post. Furthermore, you can share multiple photos at once, create selfie slide shows, and record videos hands-free. Instagram is more than a simple photo and video sharing app.

Instagram can elevate your social media presence. A great way to accomplish this is to add music to your Instagram story. There are several ways to add a song to your Instagram story. This article will explain how to add music to an Instagram story so you can keep your audience engaged.

music gets likes

Instagram Stories and How to Use Them

An Instagram story is a post that is viewable for up to 24 hours. You can decide to save a post in a highlight or send it to specific people in your following list. To make an Instagram story, navigate to the home screen or press the house icon at the bottom left corner of your screen. Next, click on your icon in the upper left-hand corner to enter Instagram Story mode.

Then, you’ll be able to choose from different format options. To view all the options, click on the white drop-down arrow on the left side of the screen. If you have a photo or video from your camera roll you’ll like to use, click on the white rounded square at the lower left-hand corner of the screen. This will allow you to access your camera roll.

Finding the Right Music

Once you have taken or uploaded a photo or video to your Instagram account, click on the Instagram sticker icon. This icon should be toward the upper right-hand side of the screen. It’s a rounded box with a smiley face. This will give you more options to choose from.

You can add a location tag, mention another user, post a donation link, create a poll, ask questions, set a countdown, design a quiz, paste stickers, and add music to your story. Click on the music icon on the upper right side of the screen. Now you’ll be given three options: For You, Browse, and Search. For quick access, you can select the music note icon to the left of the smiley face sticker icon.

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Options

The For You option will recommend popular songs. If you want to find a song that’s currently trending, this will be a great option to find music. The Browse option will allow you to look through Instagram’s playlists. The Browse function categorizes music by genre. To view more playlists, you have to scroll through the different options. To demonstrate, let’s say we are looking for a pop song. We will scroll through the various playlists until we reach the Pop folder.

Next, we select “See More” on the upper right side of the screen. Now, we have a bigger selection of songs to choose from. Finally, with the search function, you can look through Instagram’s music collection. You can search for music either by song name or artist name.

The search function will list songs or artists by best match. If you’re unsure about a song, you can preview a song before selecting it. Click on the play button or the right-facing triangle next to the song. A brief preview will play. If this is the right song, just click on the song title to select it.

Editing The Song

Now that you found the right song, you can choose what part of the song plays during your story. You can’t use full length recorded tracks. The song duration ranges from 5 to 15 seconds. To change this, click on the white circle left to the pause and play button.

Next, to scan through the song, drag the white rectangle at the bottom of the screen left and right. If you already have a portion of the song you’ll like to use in mind, there’s a song timer. It appears above the slider whenever you use it. If you’re looking for a specific verse, you can preview the lyrics by scrolling up and down.

Other Additions

Finally, after you selected a song and edited it to your liking, you can add lyrics or album artwork to your story. Above the slider, you can pick through different fonts and animation components to your video. Currently, there are four lyrics options and two album artwork options.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to skip this step. Click “done” at the top right-hand corner to confirm your edits. Thereafter, you can move and size the lyrics animation or album artwork to your liking. To add the completed post to your story, select “Your Story” at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen or “Send To” on the right.

music for products

Music Promotion Using Instagram

If you’re an independent artist, you might not be able to get your music profile onto Instagram just yet. However, you may want to alert your followers that you have new music. Thankfully, you can still link a song or project to your Instagram stories. Be that as it may, you can’t embed a song in an Instagram story post yet. Music promotion is not a primary purpose of video posting on Instagram.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a popular online distribution platform. You can upload and stream different forms of audio like podcasts and music. To link a song, open the Soundcloud application. Once you found a song you’ll like to use, click on the share button at the bottom of the screen. Next, you will be given several options to choose from. Select the “Share to Instagram Stories” option.

This imports the song to Instagram and makes it its own story. Finally, edit the post to your liking and post it to your story. Your followers won’t be able to hear the song, but they can click on the “Play on Soundcloud” option below your username. This will be at the top of the screen. Next, they will be directed to your Soundcloud account and will be able to listen to the song.

Spotify

Spotify is a popular online streaming service for music and podcasts. To link a song, find a song you’ll like to use. Click on the three dots at the top right-hand corner of the screen. Scroll through the options until you find the “Share” option. Click on this and you’ll be prompted to share on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Messages, or just copy the link. Select the Instagram icon.

This will send you to Instagram and a story post will be automatically created. Edit the post to your liking then send it to your story. Your followers can listen to the song by selecting the “Play on Spotify” option below your username.

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Why You Should Use Music

Whether you use Instagram for personal or business reasons, including music in your Instagram stories is a great way to improve your engagement. Adding a song to a story can elevate whatever message you’ll like to convey. Also, it’s a good advertising tool. For example, let’s say you want to wish a friend a happy birthday through an Instagram story. A story that has the happy birthday song playing can better get this message across.

From a business standpoint, music can help you appeal to a certain audience. To demonstrate, let’s say your target audience is teenage girls. You want to advertise your new lip gloss and appeal to Instagram users. If you post a story that has a song that’s familiar to them, they may have a better reaction to the product. If they like the song, maybe they’ll be more interested in your lip gloss.

Copyright

Music copyright gives the owner of the song rights to the piece of work. This means that copyright laws protect their creative property. Copyright protection includes stealing or uncredited use of a song. Understandably, if you wanted to use a song via Instagram music for a marketing campaign, you’ll have to worry about copyright. Under normal circumstances, if you post copyrighted music, this would be a valid concern.

The cost to license a song can vary from $100 to +$1000. For small businesses, this is an impractical expense. To enumerate, copyright infringement can result in flagged or removed media and fines upwards of $30,000. The magic rule that 30 seconds or 10% of a song may be used under fair use doesn’t always work royalty free. That being said, you can get around copyright on Instagram if you follow their rules.

Instagram Copyright Rules

Instagram still has limitations they have to abide by because of copyright. On Instagram, copyrighted music is allowed in live videos and stories. However, Instagram recommends that you use short clips. Lastly, there should always be a visual component. You can’t solely benefit from licensed music that you don’t own.

In other words, you can use licensed music in an Instagram story. For small business owners, this allows you to have more music options to choose from when promoting a product or service. Instagram can sometimes detect copyrighted music and remove your posts or stories even if you do everything correctly, but it is still a cost-effective option you can use.

music on instagram

Instagram Music Isn’t Perfect

Adding a song in an Instagram Story post is fast and efficient. On Instagram, copyrighted music can be used. As long as you change up your content and use short clips, you shouldn’t run into any copyright issues with video and recorded audio. Instagram also has a sound collection called “Facebook’s Sound Collection.” This gives you an even larger library to pull from for Instagram videos. However, because the sound or the music is available to you doesn’t mean it’s available to everyone.

The add-a-song feature on Instagram is still fairly new. As of 2021, it’s only available in 90 countries. Clearly, Instagram music isn’t like Spotify or Apple Music. You won’t be able to access every song in existence., but this feature is still a powerful communication tool that should be used in your personal and professional life.

Do you want to learn more about Instagram and how it can benefit your digital marketing plan? SEO Design Chicago can help you with your SEO, digital marketing, and website design needs. Visit us at seodesignchicago.com and schedule a consultation with us today.

FAQs

  • How do you use Instagram music?
  • What is an Instagram story?
  • How do you put music on your Instagram that’s not on Instagram?
  • Is Instagram music copyrighted?
  • Why should I use music on Instagram?

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