Instagram announced the new music feature in a press release by the company yesterday, June 28.
While it’s not exactly new, as people have been adding music to the background of their stories with Spotify, the app is now making it much easier for users to add music to their stories with their new in-app feature. Attaching music is as easy as adding a sticker, and folks can choose a backing track to their Stories before or after recording video. When anyone watches them, they’ll hear the song playing and see a sticker showing its title and artist name to discover exactly what they’re jamming to.
First, tap to add a sticker while viewing a photo or video on your story. This will pull up a page full of stickers that you can slap on to your content. Next, find the new sticker labeled “Music” in the second row. You will immediately see a long list of popular music, though you can also sort by moods and genres if you’re not sure which song you want. If you have a song in mind, you can search for it.
Once you’ve selected a song, you can choose what part of the song you want to play over your story, and then drag it over whatever photo or video you deem appropriate. Clips can be up to 15 seconds, but they can also be as short as you want. Once the music clip has been inserted, the name of the track and artist will appear whenever your friends view the story, so they can find the track on their own if they happen to like it.
Finally, you can also choose your song before you begin by swiping to the new “Music” option under the record button, which allows you to film along to a clip, rather than retrofitting music on your content. This feature is only available on iOS for the time being, but Instagram says it’s coming soon to Android as well.