Instagram has been making tons of moves lately. We still don't have chronological order, but there’s the very exciting fact that the app will no longer inform users if someone screenshots their Stories, which, let’s be honest, is a huge development for daily Instagram users everywhere. Perhaps more impressive, on the same day, they announced 1 billion members, and the social media platform launched IGTV, a platform for longform video for content creators—a kind of answer to YouTube. Today, there’s a new announcement, and it pertains specifically to a new feature on Instagram Stories: music.
The Stories feature is used by over 400 million people daily, and Instagram’s new music feature marks the first time the platform will allow people to add a musical element to their Stories. It's a strategic move that caters to the app's audience, especially seeing as over 45 percent of Instagram users follow a verified music account, and three of the top 5 most-followed accounts on Instagram are musicians. The new music feature will draw from an ever-growing library of songs sorted by mood, genre, popularity, or simply song titles and artists on the app itself, you’ll now be able to search for a song and choose the exact moment you want to add to your story.
The song will become available as a sticker, much like GIFs or locations are added on Stories now. Songs will play automatically once people tap to watch your story, and the sticker will include the song title and artist name.
For the time being, music will be available only in select countries, but Instagram plans on making the feature international in the future. In addition, only iOS users will be able to choose a song before capturing a photo or video, but Android will soon also have that capability.
