Instagram Music Launches in India: Here’s How It Works

The much-coveted Instagram Music feature finally made its big India debut today with Facebook rolling it out across Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories this morning. Initially introduced in select countries in June 2018, Instagram Music allows the platform’s users to tag snippets from songs to their Instagram stories. The upgrade is automatic on iOS and might require an app update to appear on Android.

On Instagram, users can access the music feature under the GIF/stickers tab in Stories. To use the feature, the user needs to first take a photo or video, then open the stickers tab. They will see a new animated icon titled ‘music’ which allows access to a selection of popular and trending tracks, which are further divided into categories like ‘mood’ and ‘genre.’ Available moods include upbeat, dreamy, fun, bold, inspirational or mellow, while the genres offered are Hindi, Indian pop, hip-hop, Tamil, Punjabi, Latin, Electronic and more.

After selecting their desired song, the user can then customize the video further by selecting which part of the track they’d like to use, if they’d like the album artwork on display or if they would prefer a karaoke-style read out of the lyrics on the screen. Fonts and color can be changed and moved to be displayed wherever the user prefers. Users can also choose the duration of the song, anywhere between five and Instagram Stories’ standard 15 seconds. As of now, Instagram Music is cannot be used on the main posts on Instagram accounts.

While the introduction of Instagram Music does add India to the exclusive group of countries to enjoy this feature, the tracks available are limited to only bigger global hits with a certain trend value–Billie Eilish’s entire discography reigns supreme, as does “Baby Shark.” Indian artists fare much better with several Bollywood and pop acts present on the trending list, but classic rock, metal, hip-hop and K-pop have sparse offerings. Several major international artists do not have their tracks available on the platform, but it remains to be seen if a bigger variety will gradually be added as time proceeds.