The latest feature Instagram’s testing will let you add music to your Stories, though exactly what form that music will take isn’t yet clear.
First spotted by Ishan Agarwal in Instagram’s code, the feature, called “Music Stickers,” apparently allows users to search for music clips to play over their Stories as followers view them. You’d search for appropriate tunes under different tabs labelled “Trending,” “Genres,” and “Moods.”
It’s not yet certain where the music will come from, or what form it’ll take. Will it play a clip from the song’s chorus, or the whole song? If it does play a clip, will you be able to select which clip? We’ll have to wait until the feature rolls out to know for sure.
If Music Stickers do give users the unfettered access their name implies, it’d likely be from parent company Facebook’s licensing deals with UMG, Sony, and Warner Bros. The deal with UMG specified its music could be used in “video and other social experiences across Facebook, Instagram and Oculus.” At the time, I wondered what “other social experiences” could be. Looks like this might be the answer.
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Instagram’s added several features in the last few months, so many that it’s almost hard to keep up. To Stories specifically, it’s added Type for text updates, as well as sharing screenshots from third-party apps directly to your Stories. It’s also experimenting with restaurant bookings, group video calls, a special portrait mode called Focus, and followable hashtags. Music would be the proverbial cherry on top.
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