Instagram stories are a fun and creative way to share your daily moments with friends and family. Adding music and sound effects to your Instagram story can make it even more engaging and entertaining.
This article will cover four easy methods of incorporating music and sound effects into your Instagram story. Stay tuned!
Method 1: Using Instagram’s music sticker
This is probably the easiest way to add music to an Instagram story. Luckily, Instagram’s library is extremely comprehensive and covers pretty much any song you can think of. Here are the steps that you can follow:
Start by adding a story. You can do that in a few different ways. You can shoot it on the spot or use a video or an image from your library.
Once the story is ready to be published, tap on the sticker icon on the top side of the screen, and the music sticker should be on the first page, without having to scroll down.
Tap it, and you'll find an impressive library of different songs organized by occasion, mood, genre, and so on. You can also search for a particular song, and if you're lucky, you may find a few different parts of it.
Before publishing the story, you can also customize the color or design. You might as well add the lyrics or even drag the slider to include a certain part of the audio only.
Note: No matter how long the video is, the audio will cover it and won’t stop before it ends, so synchronization will be flawless. However, if the video is longer than 15 seconds, only the first frame will be covered by the audio.
Method 2: Using saved audio over Instagram
Heard an amazing song on Instagram? If you feel like sharing it on your stories, you might have noticed already that Instagram allows saving audio these days.
There’s one problem though… Audio can only be saved for reels and not on stories. Well, the good news is you can go around this limitation.
You'll have to know the name of the respective audio, though. You can then search for it while using the music sticker, so it will be automatically attached to your story.
Here are the steps:
- Launch the app and get on the search function. You should know the name of the audio because every reel mentions it at the bottom, floating from left to right.
- Once in the search function, go to the audio tab, and then go to the music found and save the audio. This way, the audio will be saved to your library.
- Time to upload your story now… Record a story or upload a video or image from the gallery. Go to the stickers on top and find the music one. At that point, you’ll see a tab with saved audio. Tape it and find the audio you’ve saved before.
Finally, it’s time for the actual customization.
When you upload a photo only, you can choose how long the story can be, between 5 and 15 seconds. You can also customize lyrics or the display.
Uploading videos give you more convenience. The audio will play for as long as the video goes, so there are no issues with the synchronization there.
Method 3: Using third-party software
Third-party software can go in more directions. Just like you have an app for Instagram story download, you can have other third-party apps to mix videos and music. Instead of allowing you to mix pictures or videos and music, you’ll basically do everything yourself before uploading a story.
Find a video you prefer or an image and give it an audio background with such software. There are more programs out there, some of them suitable for mobile use too.
There is, however, one thing to be aware of. Unless the audio is 100% original, Instagram may flag it as copied and remove it from your story.
If you can find the same or similar audio in Instagram's library, it's better to simply use it like that. This way, there are no risks of being affected by copyright infringement issues.
Believe it or not, there are reports of original audio being targeted by Instagram’s copyright tool by mistake. It’s an automatic tool. If a song sounds too much like another one, the tool could flag it as illegal and remove it from the story.
Even if your audio gets removed, the video part will remain in your stories.
Method 4: Using Spotify
Before going deeper into details, it’s worth noting that this option is suitable if you only share audio. You can’t add both audio and video to your Instagram stories with Spotify.
You can, however, share your favorite music and your fine taste.
Launch Spotify, select your favorite song, and tap on the three dots in the right corner. You'll find an option to share audio. Tap it, and you'll be given more options based on where you'd like to share it.
You'll notice the Instagram icon too. Tap on it, and Spotify will load up the Instagram story upload tool.
The problem with Spotify and Instagram is that you’re limited. Not only are you only allowed to post audio, but you can’t edit too much, either. You can't edit lyrics, style, or appearance, but just your fine taste and a sample.
Sure, this option is alright if you somehow discover an amazing tune, but that’s pretty much it.
Final words
Adding music and sound effects is a great way to enhance your Instagram stories. Whether you opt for the simple method of using the built-in music sticker or get creative with third-party software, there are plenty of options available. So next time you're creating an Instagram story, consider adding some tunes or sound effects to make it stand out.