Liven Up Your Instagram Stories By Adding Music
By, Contributor| 30 Mar 2021
The old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words may well have some validity, but how about a picture with some accompanying music playing in the background? If you want to make your Instagram Stories catchier, then heres the easy way to add a song to your images.
Customize How Your Instagram Story Looks
Now its time to customize how the music overlay looks. Simply tap on the available options above the slider at the bottom of the screen, and pick between either a selection of scrolling lyrics to the album art. You can also change the color of the text that appears on screen and resize/move the text or image.;
And thats all there is to it! You can now share your Instagram Story with the world, your close friends or send it to someone specific.;
Create A New Instagram Story
Open your Instagram app and go to your profile. The next step is to create a new Instagram Story.
To do this you can click on the + sign on the thumbnail of your profile picture. Youll find this option at the top-left corner of the screen.
Alternatively, you can also swipe right from the Instagram Feed screen.
Image via Instagram
This will enable you to take a photo or video using your smartphone. After doing this, click on the Stickers button that is located at the top of the screen.
Image via Instagram
Youll see a range of on your screen. Choose the Instagram Music Sticker for your Story.
Here is what the Music Sticker looks like:
Image via Instagram
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Can You Put Your Own Music On Instagram Story
In order to put your own music on your Instagram story, you can click on the Instagram music sticker if it is available for your country. If it is not, a way around this is to play the music in the video that you upload to your story. This way, the music is coming from the video rather than the music sticker.
How To Add Music To Your Instagram Reels

Instagram also offers a feature reminiscent of TikTok, which allows users to create short videos that can be shared with friends and other followers and discovered while browsing the app. Reels can be up to 15 seconds in length, and you can easily add some music on top of them.
1. Open the Instagram app, go to your feed and swipe left from the screen.
2. Select Reels from the menu at the bottom.
4. Tap on the musical note icon on the left side of the display to add your music.
5. Use the search bar on top to look for the song you want to add.
6. Select the part of the song which you want to include in the clip.
7. Start recording your miniclip.
8. When youre done, press Preview, then Next.
9. Type a caption, then press the Share button to show the Reel to your followers.
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Put Music On An Instagram Story Using Spotify
If you use Spotify, you can actually directly add your favorite music tracks from the Spotify app to your Instagram Stories.
Image Gallery
The share menu in Spotify allows you to do this. If this is how you want to add music to your Instagram Story, the following steps should help you out:
Preview Your Instagram Story
Its always better to be safe than sorry. Sometimes your music clip may start abruptly or mid-sentence. That can seem awkward.
To avoid such a scenario, its advisable to preview your Instagram Story after you add music to it. It just takes a few seconds of your time but it can save you from making embarrassing mistakes.
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How To Add Music Lyrics To Your Story
If youre struggling to figure out how to add a songs lyrics to your Stories, dont worry. Below are instructions for how to find and use that editing feature:
Its important to note that the song wont play directly on your Stories, but if a user taps on that Story, it will take them to Apple Music, where they can play it.
Adding Music To Your Instagram Story Via Spotify
You can also add music from other music streaming platforms. In this guide, well show you how to do it with Spotify. Once again, this method is identical for both iPhone and Android devices. This is how its done:
The song will immediately be opened in your story, where you can make any additional adjustments. Once youre done, post it to your story. If your followers have Spotify accounts, they will be able to open the song in Spotify.
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How You Can Add Music To Instagram Tales
Whenever you launch Instagram, swipe right or tap the plus sign icon, after which scroll to story. With this particular, you are able to pick a photo or video out of your phones library or make one using Instagram. To include music, tap the musical note icon located at the very top right corner from the screen. This opens Instagrams own music center containing thousands and thousands of songs associated with a genre.
The For You section contains tracks selected by Instagram that contains trending songs at that time, songs in Reels, or videos youve loved or saved. Additionally, it contains songs from formerly adopted artists. You may also browse by groups if youre unclear about things to use at that time.
If you are certain of the song you would like to make use of, searching for this while using search engine option towards the top from the page. You are able to preview the song you want to add by striking the play button or just tap in your preferred song to include the song immediately towards the story.
When youre pleased with the storyline, tap the Done button found at top of the right corner to preview the storyline and if you think you are prepared to produce your story around the world, all you need to do is choose if you wish to publish it in your primary story, for your close buddies, or possibly a couple of select users.
How To Add Music To An Instagram Story Using Third
If you prefer adding your own personal music to a story or you dont have the music sticker feature on your phone, you can still add soundtracks to your videos with third-party tools, like our video creation tool – Lumen5. And after, upload the video on Instagram for sharing in your story.
The great thing about Lumen5 is that its not only cheap and easy to use, but also offers a wide selection of licensed music for you to choose from. And if you prefer to add your own music, that option is also available. Whats more, it allows you to customize your video by adding a company logo, a font and colors that match your brand.
To get started, check out the on-demand webinar here to learn how to use the Lumen5 tool.
But if you fancy reading to watching a video, then read on to see the steps you can follow when adding music to a video using Lumen5:
Quick Tips
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How To Use The Instagram Music Library
The most direct way to add music to your Instagram story or post is to use the platforms built-in music library. They have a wide selection of music, and youre sure to find a song that fits your mood.
Start your Insta story by tapping the Plus icon or swiping right from your home feed. At the camera screen, you can take a new photo or video, or use one you already have.;;
Once you have your image or video ready, youll be able to add special effects, text, and stickers. To add music, tap the Sticker icon. Youll see several sticker options like the date, hashtags, gifs, and others. The Music sticker is there tootap on that.
Now youll see Instagrams music library. There, you can scroll through a list of songs recommended for you. You can also search for a certain song or browse the library by genre. Not sure if youll like a song? Click the Play icon next to it to hear a preview before posting it to your Insta story.
Once you have the song you want for your Insta story, tap it. Youll be brought back to your image or video where you can select which part of the song plays and the song image thatll be displayed on your story.;
Simply drag the slider bar at the bottom of the screen to adjust which part of the song will play in your story. Remember, Instagram allows up to 15 seconds of music, but you can shorten the duration by clicking on the number-15 circle in the bottom-left of the screen.
Can I Add Music To My Stories From Instagrams Web App

The short answer is no. By default, Instagram for Web does not allow users to upload Stories. However, its possible to do so with a nifty Chrome extension, but you cant add music to it. What you can do is upload a video story which has been previously edited to include a song as background via your PC.
Now that youve learned how to dazzle your followers with your eclectic musical tastes, you may be interested in learning more Instagram tricks for example, how to add a link to your Stories, and .
Alexandra is passionate about mobile tech and can be often found fiddling with a smartphone from some obscure company. She kick-started her career in tech journalism in 2013, after working a few years as a middle-school teacher. Constantly driven by curiosity, Alexandra likes to know how things work and to share that knowledge with everyone.
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How To Put Music On An Instagram Story
In this article, weâll answer a few questions related to how to put music on an Instagram Story:
Weâll start by diving into the two ways to include music in your Instagram Storiesâthe Music sticker and creating your own video with music to upload to your Story.
Then, we’ll walk you through the ways to use Animoto to create Stories with music outside of the Instagram app.
How To Add Music To Instagram Story Introduction
But before we delve into how to add music to Instagram stories, we need to remember how much we take these cool features for granted. When Instagram first launched in 2010 it was only available for the iPhone.
You could only add pictures to it and that was it. It wouldnt be until between 2013 and 2015 that features like video posting and direct messaging were added. Yep, before that, you couldnt message anyone on Instagram or even post a video.
Stories werent even added till August of 2016. It was such a cool feature back then until every other app added it and ruined the appeal of course. Live stories were later launched in November of that year.
While its not anything neat anymore, back then the idea of sharing a snippet of your day with friends that can only be viewed for 24 hours was pretty cool.
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Decide On The Length Of The Music
As soon as you decide on the song you want to use to add music to your Instagram Story, you must figure out how long you want it to play.
If youre using a static image, the minimum length of music on your Instagram Story is 1 second. The maximum length when you add music, on the other hand, is 15 seconds.
To change the length of the music, you can click on the button on the left that reads 15. For video posts, the length of the song will automatically adjust to your videos length.
Image via Instagram
The Instagram music feature is set up so that its possible to add lyrics to any music when you add music to your Instagram Story. This happens if there are lyrics available for the song. If they are not available, the lyrics wont pop up on the screen when you are previewing it.
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How To Put Music On Your Instagram Story
1. On your iPhone or Android’s home screen, locate the Instagram icon and tap to open the app.;
2. Swipe left from your feed’s home screen to open the Stories feature.;
3. Either take or select the photo or video you want to post to your Instagram Story.;
4. In the menu bar along the top of your screen, tap the small square smiley icon, which looks like a Post-It being peeled away.;
5. Tap the “Music” option. Then, in the search box which appears, type in the song you want to include on your Instagram Story.;
6. Tap on the selected song when it appears on the list and drag the small bar at the bottom of the screen to the segment of the song you want on your Story.
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Note that you can also select how you want the music to visually appear on your Story, whether as lyrics, the cover art of the album the song comes from, or a small text box announcing the name of the song.;
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You can also adjust the length of the music segment from five to 15 seconds by tapping the circle on the left side of the music clip that reads “15” by default.
7. Hit “Done” when finished, then post your Story as normal.
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Music Library On Instagram: Limitations For Businesses
If you donât see the music sticker, make sure that you have run the latest update for the app in order to be able to access it. It is also possible that the music sticker is not available in your country. If thatâs the case, no need to worry; there are other ways to include music in your Instagram stories.
You can, for example, share music from Spotify to your Instagram story. Or of course, you can add music to your story in a video editor, and then just upload the story to your app.
As a business, however, you will run into another problem with adding music to your stories on Instagram: copyright issues.
Business accounts are not allowed to use copyrighted music from the Instagram library. The same goes for copyrighted music from Spotify. However, you do have access to the Facebook Sound Collection, which has more than 9,000 songs.
If you want to create videos with royalty-free music, there are several options out there for businesses.
Best Practices For Using Music In Your Instagram Stories
Remember to keep your audience in mind when you create an Instagram Story with music. Your artistry may not quite match that of a famous film or TV music composer, and your video will be considerably shorter, but you still want your music to match your visuals.
In some ways, the short period of an Instagram Stories clip is harder than with a long video. You need to limit yourself to a section of a song that fits logically with your image. It’s probably easier to do this with a picture, where you have the same image fro 15 seconds than with a video that can last for any length up to 15 seconds.
Unless you are looking for a specific lyric section to match your Story image, you need to ensure that you can find a clip with a definite part of music you can use. You don’t want to break into a section of music, and you don’t want to finish abruptly when your time runs out.
A common practice is to start a song at the beginning of its chorus. Hopefully, you can stop it at the end of a line, or at least avoid finishing mid-word abruptly.
Take the effort to style the Music sticker, so it doesn’t detract from your Story. You can select from three styles: Normal, Transparent, or Square. You can position the sticker anywhere you want on your screen and alter its size to ensure that it doesn’t cover up anything you want people to see clearly.
Make sure that you preview your Story first, to check to see that the music works with your images/videos.
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