How to Add Music to Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are one of the hottest features in social media marketing right now, with high-engagement rates and high visibility. Users love them, and that’s reason enough for brands to be active on the platform.

As the Stories feature has developed over the past few years, we’ve gotten everything from new interactive stickers to Shoppable tag options and more. One of the more recent features that rolled out last year was Music stickers.

If you’ve been wondering how to add music to your Instagram Stories (or why you should), this is the post for you! We’ll look at why it’s a good idea, the best way to add music to your Stories content, and how to add music to your Reels, too.

Why Add Music to Instagram Stories?

The more engaging you can make your Stories, the better. Adding another sensory experience to the content with music can better capture a user’s attention and boost how memorable the content itself is.

Music can also add new layers of entertainment, excitement, and whatever emotion you’re trying to go for, enhancing the vibe and emotional impact of the content itself. It makes the content more immersive, which is always good when it comes to social media marketing.

Should I Use Instagram’s Music Sticker?

There are a few ways you can have Instagram Stories with music in the background.

The most popular is Instagram’s music sticker. We’ll show you how to use it in the next section, but it gives you access to an enormous library of music that you can line up with your image or video as you see fit. This includes the music that’s currently trending, with artists like Lizzo and Tones and I.

The catch here, however, is that if you have a business account (not a creator or personal account), you may not have access to the music sticker. With branded campaigns comes licensing agreements, and that can get stickier. Note that some business accounts do have this, but it definitely seems to be the exception. You'll want to inquire about licensing and copyright issues before using it.

So what other options do businesses and branded accounts have when it comes to running campaigns on Instagram? Let’s take a look.

How to Add Music to Instagram Stories

When you’re adding music to your Instagram Stories in any kind of business or profit-driving capacity, you need to be conscious of potential licensing issues. Here are a few potential options.

Third-Party Tools with Licensed Music

One of the best ways to add music to Stories as a business or creator, is to look for third-party tools that offer licensed music that their subscribers can use for free. These will not have Dance Monkey available for play, but you can find a range of original and instrumental mood music to enhance your Stories all the same.

Here are a few great options, all of which offer video creation tools you can use to create Stories videos, too:

Animoto, which has thousands of licensed tracks that creators can choose from to safely use in their branded video content
Canva, which has video editing tools in addition to their well-known image creation tools; the video comes with the option to add music from their library of licensed songs
Shakr, which offers customizable video templates that come with pre-selected tracks already attached

These do come at a cost, but the cost of not having a copyright lawsuit on your hands is a plus, and many (especially Canva) are exceptionally affordable.

Use Original Music

Unless you’ve paid for a custom jingle that can be used by your business at any time or you have someone on your team who has an affinity to generating a few quick tunes quickly, this isn’t always an option. Still, it is an option, which is why we mention it.

You can always use original music in your social media content. You can play it in the background while recording a Story, or upload it using a video creator app.

You should not use the “play the music in the background” approach for licensed music that you do not have the rights to use; Instagram has a copyright detector, and it could land you in trouble.

What About Reels?

Instagram Reels is the platform’s TikTok-lookalike-feature, where users can pair audio to short videos.

Audio is obviously a big appeal to Reels in general, but just like with Stories, the music sticker isn’t an option for most business accounts. (And again, if you do have the music option available, consult someone who understands copyright law to ensure that you can actually use it; better safe than sorry.)

The same options apply here; you can create the content in advance with music you have the rights to use, or you can skip out. We do strongly recommend adding some sort of background noise to Reels, as audio is a major focus of this feature. With Stories, it’s like an added bonus; with Reels, it feels like more of a necessity.

Final Thoughts

One of the biggest advantages to Instagram’s Stories feature is how immersive and engaging it can be, especially thanks to the onslaught of interactive features we’ve gotten over the past few years like poll and question stickers. Adding music to your content is just another layer.

While adding music to branded content can be more difficult, it’s still something we recommend testing out. Watch your analytics to see if content with music has higher view rates or click-through rates; if there’s a significant uptick, that could be a trend worth investing in for your business, even if there’s extra work involved.

Ultimately, it’s all about finding what your audience responds to most, so test out different types of music on your video content and see how it goes!

Ana Gotter

Social Media Marketing Specialist

Ana is a strategic content marketer specialising in business, finance, and marketing writing, though she's worked across a range of industries. She works from her home in Orlando with her three dogs.