Instagram Stories Add Over Thousand Licensed Songs For 400 Million Daily Users

Imagining a background score with your favorite songs added to your daily life is no longer just an imagination.

Facebook acquired photo and video-sharing social networking service Instagram just announced a massive achievement last week - 400 million active users. With the announcement of them reaching an important milestone the company also introduced IGTV (InstagramTV) and added thousands of licensed songs that was added to Instagram stories.

Effective last week, users were able to add background music to their posts on their Stories, with thousands of songs offered directly in the app (including actually popular music by artists like Bruno Mars, Demi Lovato, and Maroon 5). Instagram says new songs will be added daily.

How to use Music on Instagram Stories

Adding songs to Stories works through Instagram’s sticker feature, just like polls and sliders — you’ll drag and drop in the new “Music” sticker to your post, and select the perfect background music for whatever cool thing you’re doing. Users will be able to then scroll through the song catalogue to get to the exact chunk of music they want playing for the particular video or image, too. Instagram had previously added deep linking to Spotify in Stories back at F8, but the new stickers go one step further by actually playing the music you’ve chosen in the background.

Instagram vs. Lip-sync Apps

Instagram will also let users pick a song to play before they record a video too, which feels like a shot across the bow of the various lip-sync apps out there. Like with the sticker-based option, users will be able to pick a song using a new “Music” option underneath the record button, find the snippet they want playing in the background, and then be able to record video as usual. Looks like Facebook + Instagram's personal dig at Musical.ly. The music features are now available now in “select countries” (presumably based on where Instagram could get the license to music), but Instagram is presumably working to roll it out to more places soon. The music sticker feature rolls out today for both iOS and Android, but the ability to choose music before recording will be limited to iOS for now, with Android devices getting the option soon.