How To Add Music To Your Instagram Stories

In this blog we are going to show you how to use music on your Instagram stories. And if you’re like me, you know that Instagram stories are a lot of fun, a lot of people are watching them. With these stories, a great way to entertain and keep people focused is to add music that people already like and know and you can add that to your brand. Alright, let’s jump in.

If You Have The Option To Use Music

So for your first step, there are two options you can choose from. If you are a new business or a new brand, you don’t have the option to leave music. We will come to something for that here in a few moments and we’ll teach you a workaround. If you do have the option to record music, you’ll first want to create a story by clicking on either the camera icon or your picture in the upper left hand corner. 

Create your story or record like you normally would. You can still add any text that you want, but to add music, you will go to that square smiley face at the top. 

You will then want to click on music. For us, we have it as one of the top 6 because we use it quite often, but for you, you may have to scroll through all the options to find it. 

Once you click that, it will bring you to a music section. This will allow you to add music to your story. You can search and find whatever music you are wanting to use. For this example, we are going to choose one of the top options, which is Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.” 

Once you choose the music you want, you will have multiple options as to what to do next. For example, you can add the lyrics by clicking on the far left button below the album icon. 

And you can add different parts of the song by scrubbing through, dragging and dropping. You can move the buttons below to have the lyrics this way. 

If you want the lyrics to appear bigger on your screen, you can click the button with an A inside of a box. Again, you can move them on your screen so they sit where you would like them to.

You can also add the album cover. If you choose the option that looks like a video camera, that will put a small version of the album cover on your screen. If you want the cover to be bigger, choose the next button, the one that looks like a computer monitor. 

You will also have the option to add text if you want. You will just click the button with the small and big A on it that is underlined.

Then, whenever you play the story it should play out loud. If you want to edit the video again, you can. You can play with it until you like it. This lets others know that, Hey, there’s gonna be music on here. Something that a lot of people do is add a sticker to their post to show that there will be sound. To do that, you’d go up to the square smiley face again, in the search bar at the top, type in Sound On. From there, different stickers will show up and you can add the one you like to let people know to watch with their sound on.

An example of how to use this with the particular song that we choose would be if you had a food product and you were talking about how yummy it is, and then you drop in Justin Bieber’s song “Yummy,” which is already popular. So that allows you to tell your story and/or more about your brand while putting in some pop culture.

What’s cool about music is that you don’t have to use those top options there. We used the song we did because it just came out, but you can change the song to anything you want. So you could literally find something from, for example, AC/DC’s “Back In Black.” If it’s on Apple Music, then it’s more than likely going to be available for you. We don’t know exactly who they use but we haven’t seen any limitations yet for the video. 

First Time/ New User Without The Music Option

If this is your first time and you don’t have the music app or the music option, there is something you can do. For this, you will need to have the Spotify app and have an account. So, you’ll want to go over to Spotify, make sure that the sound on your phone, depending on your iPhone or Android phone, is toggled on. 

What you will want to do if then record the song you want to use. Once the song is playing, you will go back over to Instagram, and record your story the same way you normally would. Now, you won’t be able to do anything special like add the lyrics or album cover or anything like that, but when you are talking, you will still have some music in the background. You can still let people know to turn their sound on by using a sticker or text. 

You can find your music from Spotify, Apple Music, etc. The only thing you can’t use is YouTube. This is a way that you can still add music to your Instagram stories if you are a newer user and don’t have the music option. Again, it doesn’t let you use as many features, but it does allow you to add some music and add some flair. Just make sure to use the GIF option to let people know to listen with sound.

Why Some People Have the Music Option and Others Don’t

Alright, so if you don’t have the music option within the stories feature, it’s really by chance whether you have it or not. Instagram has been rolling it out for some time now. They said that everyone should have had it by Spring of 2019, but a lot of people still don’t have it. There really is no rhyme or reason as to who has it and who doesn’t. Some articles will tell you to delete a profile and then add it back to your phone, download the latest app, but it really is just a push update. That means you don’t necessarily have to download anything to get that feature. Again, there really is no rhyme or reason to it, just make sure to keep checking your Instagram. For us, it just popped up one day out of the blue and we’ve had it ever since, so the same could happen to you. Just make sure you’re checking it frequently. 

We are looking forward to everyone’s new Instagram stories with some music. Maybe there will even be some dancing in there as well, everybody likes to see dancing, whether it’s good or not. So go out there, use Instagram stories but use music in the background and help yourself and your brand to stand out. It will help people to relate to you and help your brand move forward.

That’s all we have for this blog. If you guys have any questions about how this works, drop a question below. There were a few steps within this so you may have some questions. Again, just drop them below, we are super responsive. 

If you would like to watch our How To video on this subject, you can watch it here. Make sure to like the video as well as like and subscribe to our YouTube Channel and hit the bell so that you don't miss out on any of the content we put out every single week.  

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