Instagram's popularity is growing by the day. It is already labelled as one of the worthiest deals in the tech history after being valued at $100 billion by Bloomberg Intelligence when Facebook snapped it for $1 billion in 2012. But the exponential growth, even in terms of users which recently surpassed 1 billion MAUs, is a result of the focus on user experience.
Several new features are added to the popular photo and video-sharing platform, but the latest addition is worth stopping and checking out. Instagram Stories is a popular feature on the platform, and the Facebook-owned app just made it a lot more fun for its 400 million daily users.
Instagram started rolling out music in Stories to iOS users, which allows them to add a soundtrack that compliments the story. This feature follows the arrival of popular entries such as Highlights, Superzoom and resharing of public feeds.
With Instagram Stories' music feature, users can choose from a wide collection of songs from artists and bands like Bruno Mars, Dua Lipa, Calvin Harris and Guns N' Roses. Users can browse songs based on mood, genre and what's popular.
"When you tap to add a sticker to a photo or video in Stories, you'll now see a music icon. Tap on it to open a library of thousands of songs — you can search for a specific song, browse by mood, genre or what's popular and tap the play button to hear a preview. When you've selected your song, you can fast-forward and rewind through the track to choose the exact part that fits your story," Instagram explained the feature in its official blog.
The music sticker will tell viewers about the song title and artist name. The feature is available on iOS currently and soon to be available on Android platform.
But the best feature we feel is the ability to choose a song before capturing a video to be posted as a story. Simply open the camera on the app, swipe to new "Music" option under record button, search the song, select the part you want and start recording.
With this function, Instagram takes a jab at the popular Musical.ly and gains an edge over Snapchat, which is bound by copyright restrictions to include such a feature. Facebook has struck partnership deals with major record labels and independent artists to make this new integration a success. TechCrunch reported that Instagram would also compensate musicians and rights holders for use of their songs on the app.
