iOS users will also be able to choose a song before they start recording their Instagram Stories, while Android users will have too wait a while before the feature is made available to them.
Instagram has rolled out a new feature called ‘Music Sticker’ that will enable users to add soundtracks to their Stories. The Facebook-owned platform made the annoucement via a blog post, in which the company also noted that Instagram Stories was used by over 400 million users everyday. To add music, users will have to select the music icon locate under 'stickers'. When selected, users will be be given an option to add a specific song to their Story. Instagram notes that it has a "library of thousands of songs" from which users can choose music from, with more music being added to the library everyday.
The users can search and select a specific song depending upon the mood of the story or what is popular, and preview listen by tapping the ‘Play’ icon right next to it. After selecting a song, users can even fast-forward or rewind through the track to choose the exact part that fits the Story. When people are watching their stories, they will hear the song playing as they are viewing a photo or video. They will also see a sticker showing the song title and artist name.
iOS users currently have an option to choose a song before capturing a video. To add a song before adding the video to the story, users can open the camera and swipe to the new “Music” option under the record button. They can search for the song, select the exact part that they want to be in their stories, and then record a video as the song plays in the background. Android users will have to wait for some time for this feature to arrive to their devices. Instagram said that this ‘music sticker’ is now available as part of Instagram version 51 in select countries.
The update follows two major back-to-back rollouts from the company. Earlier this week, Instagram, which now has a billion users, launched a dedicated app for longer videos. Called IGTV, the new app will bring long-form, vertical videos from popular Instagram creators as well as regular users. Following this launch, the company rolled out a bunch of new features which included video chat, topic channels in Explore and new camera effects for Stories. These features were released for both Android and iOS users. Instagram also announced a new lite version of its app for Android. The new app is listed on the Google Play Store and weighs a mere 573Kb, which is 1/55th the size of the full-fledged Instagram app that is around 33Mb in size.
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Sourabh Kulesh
A journalist at heart; has knowledge of a wide gamut of topics related to enterprise and consumer tech. View Full Profile
