Instagram Music is now available in the Netherlands! If you follow foreign friends on Instagram, you’re sure to have seen this feature. If you then tried to add music to your own Instagram Stories, you’ll have received the message 'Instagram Music is not available in your region'. Until today.

What is Instagram Music?

Instagram Music is a feature fresh out of Instagram’s oven. Users of Instagram Stories will be familiar with stickers; virtual add-ons that stimulate interaction with your followers. Instagram Music is one of these stickers that you can add to your story.

The Instagram Music sticker allows you to play a part of a soundtrack. Now, you may think that only unlicensed music will be available in the Instagram Music library, but the opposite is true. Instagram benefits as much as possible from the deals that parent company Facebook has closed with the major music labels Sony, Warner and Universal Group. These agreements have made a lot of music on Spotify available for Instagram Music.

Now that Instagram Music is available in the Netherlands, the small links to Spotify are a thing of the past. In any case, those links in the top-left of the screen weren’t user-friendly at all, since most people are right-handed. Below you can see the clear difference between a static Spotify link and the dynamic sticker of Instagram Music.

How do I add Instagram Music to Instagram Stories?

There are two ways to add Instagram Music to a Story. Make a post that you want to add to your story. This can be anything; a Boomerang, a video or a Superzoom. The form doesn’t matter for adding a music sticker. Go to the "stickers" option at the top of the screen and select "music." A library will appear where you can choose from the "Popular", "Moods" and "Genres" categories. Of course, you can also enter your favourite soundtrack into the Search Tool. Choose the soundtrack that you want to add to your story and click ►. In the gif below, you can see how to add a music sticker to a story:

The second way is to swipe to the left at "Boomerang" and "Superzoom" until you get to "Music".

Announce your line-up via Instagram Music.

As a festival, club or music venue you’ll want to announce the names of your line-up at a specific moment. This is the "moment suprême" that music lovers are waiting for. There are already several options for announcing a line-up, but Instagram Music provides you with another. How cool is it that when you reveal the artists on your line-up, you can also play a piece of their most popular soundtrack?

Instead of a relatively expensive promotional video, Instagram Music offers a cheap and fast alternative to release a line-up. Below you’ll find an example of how you can announce an artist for your event:

EVENTIX TIP:

Let potential visitors know that the line-up will be announced via Instagram Stories by posting on the event page on Facebook. Doing so will make people curious, and makes it more likely that your audience will remember the line-up. Don't forget to add the line-up to "Info" on the event page after you have announced it through Stories. You can also add the "Line-Up Story" to the highlights that can be seen on your Instagram profile. You can add a Story to an Instagram Highlight by clicking "Highlight".