How to Add Music to an Instagram Video

There are quite a few ways to customize your Instagram photos and videos—filters being the most apparent. Apart from touching up your media with built-in filters, you can also add music to help bring the images and scenes to life. 

Music can further enhance your videos by making them look more professional and help incite certain emotions in your followers. It’s no wonder that including music in YouTube videos is standard practice.

Before we show you how to add music to Instagram videos, too, there is one matter we need to bring to your attention—Instagram’s music guidelines. 

What Type of Music Can You Add to Your Instagram Videos?

Adding music to Instagram stories used to be frowned upon. Now, it’s uncommon to run into a story from a brand or an influencer that doesn’t feature some tunes.

So, what’s changed? 

The short answer is—Instagram’s policy. While the platform wasn’t too kind to people who uploaded music alongside their videos or had tunes blasting in the background while recording stories, Instagram has become a lot more lenient. It’s come to the point where the platform is actually encouraging people to include music in their videos. 

That said, there are some limitations to which tunes you can use in your videos, as well as how long you’re playing the songs for. The main reason why Instagram frowned upon music in the first place—and the reason why these limitations exist today—is due to copyright laws. 

The last thing Instagram wants is to limit the creativity of its users. At the same time, they can’t afford to take the risk of letting everyone “stream” copyrighted music on the platform. There’s a high chance they’d end up in a lawsuit that would almost certainly end in astronomical fines. 

If that were the case—and you could add whichever music you like—you’d end up in a world of trouble too. That’s why Instagram is vigilant when it comes to music and has clearly defined policies that you should be aware of. 

Instagram’s Policies on Music

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Instagram has issued an official statement in an attempt to clarify their music guidelines and explain further where they stand on the topic. 

From the post, it’s evident that the platform understands the importance of music and its role in building and maintaining online communities. At the same time, Instagram wants to make sure that they uphold the agreements that protect artists, songwriters, and partners who are the pillars of the music industry. 

While the details of Instagram’s licensing agreements remain private, there are a few guidelines you need to follow if you want to add music without fear of having your videos taken down by the moderators:

• There are no limits on music in Instagram Stories
• You can film and broadcast a live band, artist, or performance
• If your video/live stream contains several full-length recorded songs, Instagram will likely enforce some limitations
• The platform recommends shorter clips
• The videos must have a visual component—meaning that you cannot have videos with images and audio-only

These guidelines apply to both Facebook and Instagram, regardless of the type of account you have (e.g., personal, business, pages, verified, or unverified accounts). 

The “limitations” the guidelines are referring to can span from having a portion of your video muted or interrupting your stream to taking your videos down. They have not specified whether this means that you can play a copyrighted song for a few seconds or not, but it’s best to stay on the safe side and use royalty-free music. 

Instagram In-Product Notifications

Having your videos muted or your live streams interrupted can be extremely frustrating. It’s not in Instagram’s best interest to anger their users, so Instagram implemented a mechanism that will help you avoid these annoying situations while ensuring they uphold their license agreements.

The platform does this through in-product notifications. The notifications help clear the confusion regarding audio use by letting you know when you’re using music that doesn’t adhere to the platform’s licensing agreements. 

That way, while you’re live-streaming, you’ll be able to turn off the music or switch to a non-copyrighted tune and keep the broadcast up. 

Instagram In-Product Notifications

Image source: Instagram blog

There is a workaround that will spare you the headache of trying to figure out whether a particular song is or isn’t allowed on the platform. 

You can leverage Facebook’s Sound Collection to add some catchy tunes to your videos without worrying about breaking the guidelines. The tunes cover all the major genres from hip-hop and jazz to pop and country, so you’ll have plenty of options.

This leaves the following question open—how to make music videos on Instagram?

Adding Music to an Instagram Video Through the App

There is an option to add music to your Instagram Stories, although it’s not readily apparent. Keep in mind that this only applies to Stories, and the option will not exist if you’re posting a video to your Instagram feed. 

If you’ve played around with all the different gifs, filters, stickers, and other effects on Instagram, you’ve likely noticed a sticker labeled Music. If not, here’s how you’ll find it:

1. Click the button to create a new Story
2. Span a picture or record a video
3. Before you post it, click the Sticker button (square smiley face)
4. Select Music and choose a tune

Instagram Music

Image source: Instagram blog

How To Use Instagram Music

When you first select the Music option, you’ll see a couple of featured tracks under the Popular tab. You’ll also have the option to browse the tunes by Moods or Genres. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can always use the search bar to type in the song title. 

Once you add the tune through this feature, the sticker will appear that you can (read: have to) add to your photo or video to show which track is playing in the background. This is by far the fastest and easiest way to add music to your Instagram videos, provided you want to spice them up with popular, catchy tunes. 

There are a few drawbacks to this feature, though:

Are there any alternatives to creating Instagram videos with music? There are some workarounds, as well as quite a few third-party apps that you can use to create stunning videos with your favorite tunes, which you can then upload to Instagram.

Play Music on Your Phone While Creating a Video

One way to bypass Instagram’s restrictions—of only being able to add music to Story—includes getting a little creative. If you are a good problem-solver, this might have already crossed your mind. We’re talking about multitasking and playing music on your phone as you’re recording the video.

If you’re an iPhone user, you can open up the Music app on your device and queue up the song you’d like to play. After you navigate to Instagram and select Story, you’ll need to swipe up to open the Control Center. From there, play the song you chose, exit the control center, and start filming your Story with the music in the background. 

Does this sound like too big of a hassle? That’s because it is. 

While not exactly technically challenging, the problem with this approach is that Apple Music isn’t royalty-free. The app is, at its core, a streaming service. The idea behind it is to let you listen to your favorite tracks, but that doesn’t mean you can add them to your content. 

In other words, the only way to know whether you can use a certain tune in your videos is to go back to creating an Instagram Story, selecting the Music sticker, and seeing if the song you’re planning to use is featured there. 

There has to be an easier way to add music to videos on your Instagram feed, right? The good news is, there are dozens of free video editing apps that let you add music to your videos, which you can then easily upload to Instagram. 

InVideo—Making Video Editing a Breeze

InVideo is a powerful yet extremely easy to use video editor. Our platform is browser-based, so there is no download required, and you don’t have to worry about storage or whether your device’s specifications will impact your editing capabilities. 

The best thing about our video editing app is that you can get started right away for free! All you need to do is create an account on our website, and you can start making captivating videos in minutes. With our free plan, you can create and export up to 60 videos per month! 

Our platform features an intuitive drag-and-drop video editor that will allow you to embellish your videos with filters, layers, transitions, effects, and more—with only a few clicks, even if you have no video editing experience. 

You can choose from over 2,000 professionally designed templates and tweak each element to create that perfect video. 

InVideo Instagram Story Templates

You can browse templates by use-case or by the type of video you want to create:

• Instagram Story
• Facebook Story
• YouTube Video
• Marketing Video
• Snapchat Story
• LinkedIn Newsfeed post

One of the amazing features you can utilize is Music! InVideo provides an extensive library of audio tracks that you can add to your videos with a single click. 

We’ll give you a short, step-by-step guide to adding music to your videos on our platform, so you can see just how easy the whole process is with InVideo.

How To Add Music to Your Instagram Videos With InVideo

Creating stunning videos with our platform literally takes less than 15 minutes, even if you’ve never opened a video editor in your life. Thanks to our wide range of pre-made templates, you don’t have to start editing from scratch, which speeds up the process dramatically.

After you log in, the Pre-made templates option on the homepage will be selected by default. What you need to do is select Instagram Post or Instagram Story as the type of video you want to create.

InVideo Homepage

For this example, we’ll go with Instagram Post since there is no option to add music to videos on your Instagram newsfeed through the social media platform itself. 

After clicking on the Instagram Post button, you’ll see five featured templates for different types of videos. These are the most popular ones, but you can always click the View All button in the top right corner to see the entire list of Instagram-related templates.

Say you wanted to promote your Bakery on Instagram. This Dessert Day Quote template would be a perfect fit. 

Dessert Day Quote Template

On the left, you can see the length of the pre-made template and preview it. Make sure you select the Square option on the right side of the screen if you’re planning to post the video on your feed, rather than as a Story. Then, click the Use this template option to fire up the video editor.

Adding Music

InVideo covers all of the basic video editing options and provides quite a few advanced ones. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll focus solely on the Music feature. 

InVideo Music Feature

When you click on the Music button, a new menu will appear right next to it, with a bunch of different audio tracks. All of the tunes in our extensive media library are royalty-free, so you can use them safely on any videos you plan on uploading to Instagram or anywhere else on the internet. 

You can select the category to sort the tunes by different moods and play each track before you decide which one would fit your video the best. There are 18 categories to choose from, including:

• Happy
• Bright
• Calm
• Funky
• Inspirational
• Romantic
• Entertaining

Alternatively, you can click the Upload your own button to import your own music and add it to the video—just make sure the music isn’t copyrighted. 

Once you’re happy with your choice, click the three dots next to the tune and choose one of the two options:

1. Add before track—the audio will play alongside the video
2. Add after track—the audio will start after the video ends

Here, you’d want to go with the first option. After you add the track, it will appear on the timeline, under the video. 

Timeline Audio Editing

To edit the track, hover your mouse over it on the timeline and press the Edit button. 

At the very top of the timeline, you’ll be able to choose which part of the audio you want to add. The entire track will be selected by default, but you can drag the sliders left and right to select the desired part of the track—say the chorus of a song—and add it to the video.

Adding Music to Your Instagram Videos on the Go

InVideo is an excellent tool if you want to sit down at your computer and create stunning videos that your followers will adore and that’ll go viral. But what about all those situations when you’re out and about and want to create an Instagram video with music and post it right away? 

Here are a few apps you can use to add music to your videos on your mobile device:

1. Videoshop
2. Vigo Video
3. Lomotif
4. InShot

Here’s a quick comparison between the four options:

Each of these apps covers the basic video editing features, like trimming and flipping the videos, adding transitions, filters, layers, etc. It also allows you to add music to the video directly from the app. 

They’re all decent choices if you’re looking to create an Instagram post or Story with a catchy tune on the fly. If you’re looking for a video editor with slightly more advanced capabilities and want to create professional-looking videos for your business or personal social media profiles, then InVideo is the way to go. 

You can still capture the amazing moments of your journey with your mobile device, transfer the videos to your PC, upload them to InVideo, and create breathtaking videos with our powerful platform. 

Get started with InVideo today for free and enhance your online presence with breathtaking videos!