Instagram Stories, Now Twice as Big as Snapchat, Adds Music Integration

Instagram users can now add a soundtrack to their stories: The Facebook-owned service announced the addition of music stickers Thursday, allowing users to select individual songs to play in the background while their photos and videos are being displayed as part of a story.

“You can search for a specific song, browse by mood, genre or what’s popular and tap the play button to hear a preview,” the company said in a blog post. “When you’ve selected your song, you can fast-forward and rewind through the track to choose the exact part that fits your story.”

Users can also pre-select a song before recording a video, which then plays in the background while the clip is being recorded. This makes it possible for users to record lip sync clips and mini music videos — a feature that’s been extremely popular on Musically.

Instagram also used Thursday’s update to reveal another user metric milestone: Instagram Stories are now being viewed by more than 400 million people every day, the company announced on its blog. That’s more than twice as many as the latest daily user number from Snapchat, which announced in April that its service was used by 191 million people every day.

Techcrunch was first to report about Instagram’s plans for music stickers a little over a month ago. The move comes after Facebook struck deals with the major record labels at the beginning of this year. The company also recently announced an integration with Spotify, letting users share music from the Spotify app directly to Instagram Stories.