Add music to your videos and photos in Instagram Stories*: This will enhance the storytelling elements and help establish deeper emotional connections with followers. As Instagram explains, "now you can add a soundtrack to your favorite moments to bring them to life." Let's figure out how to do this.

There are several secrets to making content more memorable. One of them is to influence several channels of perception at once. Some people remember information better by ear, while others are more visually oriented, and some rely on tactile or taste sensations. Current technology doesn't allow for taste and touch in Instagram stories*, but it does allow enhancing the perception of video, photos, or text with sound.

Add music to stories through the Instagram* app

Step 1

Create a story. To do this, go to Instagram*, swipe left, and take a photo or video. You can also add an existing photo or video from the gallery. To add text stories, press the "Create" button in the side camera menu. After that, add filters, stickers.

Step 2

Add a "Music" sticker. To do this, tap the sticker icon at the top of the screen and choose the corresponding sticker. An alternative is to use the music note icon. After this, a search bar and two tabs, "For You" and "Browse," will open. The first tab offers various tunes that are likely to match your taste. The second one contains different categories of melodies grouped by genre, mood, and themes.

If you know the name of the track you want to add, enter it in the search bar.

Press the "Play" button to make sure it's the track you were looking for.

Step 3

Select the fragment of the track you want to add to your story. To do this, move the sliders at the bottom of the screen to the right or left. The maximum duration of a music fragment is 15 seconds.

Step 4

Add subtitles. After selecting the music fragment, choose the "Aa" icon above the audio track line. This could be text that "types" on the screen, appears as karaoke lines, and so on. If you select the crossed-out circle, there will be no subtitles.

Step 5

Choose the type of sticker. At the end of the same line, there are two icons. Tapping one of them gives you a sticker with the album cover on the left and the track title and artist name on the right. Selecting the second option gives you a sticker where the album cover is larger, with the artist name and track title below. You can then choose the optimal size of the sticker and where you want to place it on the screen.

If you do not want to add a large sticker, the track title will automatically appear at the top of the screen.

Step 6

Publish stories with music.

Add music to stories via screen recording

If the desired melody is not in Instagram's* library, you can add it via your smartphone's screen recording. Note: copyright compliance in this case is required!

To add music to stories via screen recording, play the desired track and open the desired photo or video. Then start screen recording. Save this recording and then add it to Stories.

On Android phones, the screen recording function is in the settings. It can also be found by pulling down the top curtain. It depends on the phone brand and model.

To find the screen recording function on iOS, go to Settings, then Control Center, and add "Screen Recording." After that, swipe down the top right menu curtain—there will be the recording icon. After recording, edit the video and post it as a story on Instagram*.