Instagram has always been a platform for discovery, from launching new food trends to fashion brands, but music has been a more difficult area for the app from a discovery standpoint. Before the launch of last week’s IGTV, artists were unable to post full music videos to Instagram, and the app only recently integrated with Spotify to let users seamlessly link albums and tracks to Stories. (The Spotify integration requires you to go to Spotify to listen to music.)
Beginning today, you can get your beats fix and listen to trending songs right within Stories, thanks to a new option that lets you add a high-quality soundtrack to your own photos and videos.
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After you take a photo or video in Stories, tap the sticker icon, and select the new “music” option. Tap that and you’ll see a library with thousands of songs, categorised by “popular”, “moods”, and “genres”. You can listen to previews and, when you’ve picked your track, you can select the exact part of the song you want playing during your Story.
There’s also a new “Music” camera mode that you can use to select a song before taking a video. Simply open the camera, swipe to “Music”, and choose a song. Any what song is that queries from people who see your Story will be answered on-screen: Instagram provides a sticker with the song title and artist name.
According to Instagram, 45% of users follow a verified music account, and three of the app’s most popular accounts are musicians. It isn't hard to imagine a day when the top charts are determined not just by what's playing on the radio or what people are streaming, but partly by which tracks people are posting on Instagram.