How to Choose Music for Instagram Videos

Instagram is one of the most used social media platform out there, with over a billion users. It is undoubtedly a powerful tool used by individuals and businesses alike to not only share stories but promote products and services. Finding the best music for Instagram videos can be a daunting task, but we put together this guide to help you learn the ropes and become an Instagram expert in no time!

About Instagram

Instagram made a big splash right from the start.

On the day of its launch in October 2010, the photo-sharing app picked up 25,000 users in its first 24 hours and a whopping 100,000 had signed up by the end of the first week.

From there, Instagram’s rise only got more extreme. Phenomenal growth drew the attention of the whole world, and in 2012, with 30 million users on board, it was sold to Facebook for the astonishing sum of $1 billion.

Instagram has come a long way in a short time, and that’s probably because it was offering just what the public wanted when it appeared.

People were ready for a convenient showcase that could turn their own lives into a rolling commentary made up of images, videos, and even live streams, and allow them to watch others doing the same thing too.

Why so successful?

Instagram success can be put down to a combination of ‘right place’ and ‘right time’. Smartphone ownership had reached saturation point and while other platforms like Facebook allowed users to upload their pictures and videos, Instagram had a different emphasis.

For whatever reason, its layout and features caught the public imagination, and it rode a wave of its own making.

Instagram also helped to give rise to the phenomenon of the ‘influencer’, the super popular person who everybody looks to.

They don’t start out like a celebrity, but they may end up becoming one. Such people attract millions of followers and that makes them tremendously bankable.

That’s why Facebook snapped the platform up. It’s a great way to get seen, which is probably why you’re reading this!

Millennials make up the majority of Instagram’s audience, people who are savvy enough not to fall for the same old style of advertising that sold things in the past.

They don’t trust celebrity endorsements as much as their grandparents did, but they do trust the recommendations of the influencers because these people talk to them on their level and seem more ‘real‘ than traditional paid endorsers.

Stats on Instagram Users and Usage

The pull to advertise on Instagram is as huge as the potential audience, which, by the end of June 2018 had risen to the headline-grabbing figure of 1 billion per month, according to Statista. That’s a lot of potential customers.

As of July 2019, the three countries with the highest number of Instagram users were the United States with 110 million users, Brazil with 70 million users and India with 69 million users.

Pew Research Center has pointed out that 37 percent of Internet users in the US are active on Instagram. Traditional media can’t hope to attract that many pairs of eyes.

Aside from these figures, Instagram follows Facebook when it comes to user engagement, with over 60 percent of users logging in every day.

As we mentioned, it’s mostly millennials, users aged from 18 to 34 who are the largest demographic using the app. This is hardly surprising given the unstoppable rise of ‘selfie culture’ and the urge that many people now have to document almost every moment of their lives.

In terms of gender, there are more male Instagram users (as of July 2019) than female users worldwide, with the split standing at 52 percent versus 48 percent respectively.

15 percent of active users around the world were women between the ages of 18 and 24 and more than half of the Instagram population is under 34 years of age.

All in all, Instagram stats paint a picture of massive growth, both in terms of users and content. There are more than 40 billion shared photos, and the platform accumulates more than 3.5 billion daily likes or “loves”.

So, it’s no wonder that you’re interested in using Instagram to distribute your videos. The potential audience is young, active and always hungry for new content.

How Can You Make Instagram Videos with Music?

The cliché about Instagram is that it’s just meant for people who want to show off their new clothes or take close-ups of their lunch.

There are people who do those things, but plenty of brands have made their home too. Even back in 2017, there were 25 million business profiles, and there are probably more now. That’s a tell-tale sign that Instagram has promotional value.

Good business owners don’t waste time and effort on things that don’t help their companies, so they must be on to something. That’s why Instagram is a great place to share your next video.

Of course, there’s so much content on there already that you might be wondering how your humble video is ever going to get noticed, but don’t let that put you off. If you make an attractive video and you match it with catchy music, there’s every chance that it will be shared.

Interesting content always gets passed around, so your video can go from ‘invisible’ to ‘viral’ quite quickly if it resonates with enough people.

In the past, you could add music to your Instagram videos in the app itself using Instagram Stories, but that’s no longer possible.

Now you need to use third-party tools if you want to add a soundtrack to your moving images, so we’ve added a few suggestions below.

1. Audio Buzz Video Preview

We may be a little biased here, but we think you’ll see that it’s with good reason once you check out the Audio Buzz Video Preview Tool.

It makes auditioning music for your videos a cinch, because it lets you add royalty-free music tracks to your productions in real-time, and if you’ve ever sat through the tedious process of downloading tracks before dropping them into your own video-editing software, it will seem like a breath of fresh air.

Finding the right audio goes a lot faster once you’ve uploaded your video to the Audio Buzz platform because then you can quickly audition different music until you find something that ticks all the right boxes for you.

The library is big, but you can narrow down your choices quickly by filtering according to genre, mood, vocals, composers, tempos, and instruments.

The Audio Buzz Video Preview Tool is a real time-saver because when you’re producing there’s no substitute for seeing in real-time how the music works with the video.

This feature sets it apart from many of the other available applications, something we think you’ll appreciate once you try it.

Once you’ve found the perfect piece of music for your project, you only need to make a single payment and the rights to use it are yours.

You don’t need to worry about paying royalties down the line and the same goes for copyright issues because it’s all taken care of. Give it a try for yourself, and we’re willing to bet that you will put Audio Buzz at the top of your list too.

2. Flipgram

This is a third-party app, available for iOS. Once installed, you’ll need to create a Flipgram account.

Once that’s done, you can start combing through its long list of 90-second songs, ranging from classics to the latest hits. You also have the option to upload a song from your phone.

Flipgram lets you choose a song before you’ve recorded your video or during the editing process. To select a song before recording, tap the music icon in the upper right of the screen to search for your desired music.

Download the audio, then add it to your Instagram video.

If you opt to add the music after recording the video, tap the music button, which is found at the bottom of the editing menu.

Once you have set up everything, you can upload the video to Instagram. You can add filters or post the video as it is.

3. InShot – Video Editor and Video Maker

For users with Android phones, this is another option that can help add music to your Instagram videos. InShot is not only a video editor, it’s also a video maker.

To use this application, click “Video”, which you will find under the heading “Create”. Then, pull the video from your phone gallery.

Once it’s been imported, you can begin the editing process. You can cut it, add filters, and add the desired music.

This app has a fair selection of short audio clips, but if you can’t find anything that fits your video or slideshow, then it will let you upload an audio file from your phone’s music library.

4. Pic Music

There are many free apps that let Apple users add music to their Instagram videos and slideshows, but we have to single out Pic Music as one of the best available.

Pic Music isn’t a video editor. It’s just for adding audio from your music library to your videos.

You can choose which part of the song you want to use, and if you’re feeling creative, you can record your own voice too.

If you want to post a single photo or a slideshow, Pic Music is a good choice for the casual user, but it might not give you enough tools to do a professional job.

Copyrighted Music on Instagram

When you add music to your Instagram videos, you need to be sure that you are legally allowed to do so.

By choosing a service like Audio Buzz that offers royalty-free audio clips you can be sure of avoiding copyright infringement (and potential prosecution).

The web may be all about sharing, but if you want to avoid sleepless nights, you need to make sure that you don’t share music that could land you in hot water.

If you are making videos to build your brand or advertise your products on Instagram, then you definitely don’t want to harm your business by getting into legal difficulties.

Social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube have sophisticated methods of detecting when you’ve used music that you don’t have the rights to, so it’s best not to try to game the system.

And you don’t want your customers (or rivals) calling you out either. Bad news spreads just as quickly as good on social media!

You could steer clear of trouble by hiring a composer, but this can be a time-consuming and expensive approach.

That’s why we recommend that you source pre-existing music that’s cleared for use and only needs to be paid for once.

So, what’s the bottom line?

The short answer to that question is—great videos are greater with music, and they’re even greater still when they’re on Instagram.

The long answer is—these days, every business that wants to be successful needs to raise consumer awareness of its brand.

In the old days, companies spend money on traditional marketing methods. They used radio ads, magazine ads, and TV ads if they could afford them.

With advertising like that, the message is sent out in the hope that the right people will see it and come to you.

But social media has changed all that. For a start, it doesn’t cost you anything to use, so even if you are a small business you can still afford to put your products, services and brand in front of the whole world.

A brand is a company’s identity, and the brand stories that play out on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and others are winning over new legions of customers.

These customers do part of your job for you by sharing content that you produce with the people they know, and as any seasoned marketer will tell you, word-of-mouth recommendations are the most powerful of all.

Social media platforms like Instagram are the ideal place to help you tell your brand story and adding music to your Instagram videos will take them the extra mile.

Music gives life to your posts and makes them more interesting to watch. Videos without music aren’t very appealing at all.

Users and customers have more than one sense, and these days they expect you to throw everything that you can at them, so engage them!

There are so many easy-to-use tools out there now, that there really isn’t any excuse not to show off your video content to the world.