How to Get Music on Instagram Reels if You Don’t Have the Full Audio Selection
Great news everyone: Business accounts do not have to switch to Creators to get music in Reels
Everyone loves Instagram Reels. Mostly because it’s one of the 3 most effective ways to grow Instagram followers today, along with Instagram Live Rooms and Giveaways.
But one aspect of Reels is driving people a little nutty (if my DMs are any indication!): our inability to add “real” music to our Reels in Business accounts!
Most business accounts on Instagram do not have music from recording artists. The reason for that is because of this “little thing” called copyright.
As businesses, we are not legally allowed to use the latest Taylor Swift for example, in videos (or Instagram Reels) promoting our brand for our own profit, even if not directly.
That’s why Instagram doesn’t give you the music feature in stories (and now Reels) if you have a business account —if your business account is an exception to this rule, don’t be surprised if it disappears soon!
So while writing to Instagram to complain or pouting won’t do us any good, here are the 5 things we can actually do to add audio to our reels.
How to get music on your Instagram Reels if you don’t have “real” music in Stories and Reels music button
Here’s a new hack to get access to the FULL music library on Instagram Reels and Stories, even if you’re a business account: switch your account category to Entrepreneur.
Here’s how to do that:
Go to edit profile
Tap on the category
Search for Entrepreneur and tap done
Boom, you should be able to see all music in your music button.
If that doesn’t work for you, as Instagram can be inconsistent, here are other options to jump into the Reels trend, even without all the latest music available to your Instagram account in Reels and Stories via the music button:
1) Record our own original audio for your Instagram Reels
Reels don’t all need to have a famous song and a person jumping up and down while magically changing outfits (even though those can be pretty entertaining).
You can also use your own voice as your audio track.
You can do this to:
voice your opinion about a topic your audience cares about
share knowledge in your niche
tell a story (“how I got started” for example)
give updates about yourself or your business
engage your audience with something fun, like I did in this example below
Don’t forget to add some fun Reel Covers, to make your Reel stand out in your feed and grow your number of views
How to add your own original audio to Reels:
Record your Reels speaking to the camera
Use the voice over feature inside Reels or inside another editing app, we love and recommend InShot
If you want audio from another Reel or TikTok, use your phone screen recorder to record your screen, bring your video to InShot, extract audio (that feature is hidden on the volume option)
If you use Canva, we have some amazing templates for FULL Instagram Reels made in Canva. designs you can mix and match and add in between your on-camera Reels to have more impact!
If you just need beautiful covers for your on-camera Reels, we got you too!
See all our available Reels templates by tapping the arrow on the right side below!
2) Use someone else’s original audio
Just like on TikTok, when you see someone else’s Instagram Reel, you will be able to click on their audio to see other Reels with that same audio and use their audio in your own Reel.
And while businesses won’t be able to use copyrighted music if they click on an audio from someone else’s Reels, there are plenty of people who have original audios that you can click on and use.
To do that:
go to the explorer page and click on Reels on the top.
scroll until you find one that says “Original Audio” in the bottom and that you like that audio to use in one of yours.
click the original audio and it will open a page where you can see others who used the audio and also a button to use audio
that will open your Reels camera with the audio already there and you will hear it as you record.
3) Pre-produce your Reels to include any music or sound you like
Fun fact: Most TikToks we see are pre-produced, which means they are created outside of TikTok and just uploaded later. If you want to go that route, you can use apps like Splice, InShot, or even TikTok itself, where you can combine voice and music.
Note that no matter where you add your music to your Reel, it does not change the copyright laws. But these apps usually also allow you to add royalty-free music, which are okay to use, and can be great background sounds for your Reels with voice over.
4) Use royalty free music in your Instagram Reels
You can also use royalty-free music in your Reels. Facebook Creator Studio has a free music library available that you can access through the music button even if you’re a business account. Some business accounts have seen the music button added back to Reels and Instagram Stories, where you can see the generic music you can use in your Reels.
5) Change your account to a Creator account to get access to music in Stories and Reels (but there’s a catch!)
You will lose the ability to plan your posts for auto-publish through scheduling apps like Later or Planoly, which in my eyes is not worth it (auto-publishing saves you a ton of time and is good for your mental health, too!).
Now if you’re a business and want to switch to Creators just to get the music feature, think that this type of account was not made for businesses and even though you’d have the technical ability to use music from a button, you’re still a business stealing copyrighted music for your own promotions, so still not legal —this would be the same to say any business can use your Instagram content to promote themselves just because they have the Repost app. Makes sense?
Reels is new, but there are already lots of original audio options you can use and there will be more and more fun mashups and original audios you can use as time goes by.
Important: this article is not intended to give you legal advice or advise you on how you should and should not use original audios and copyrighted music on Instagram. Please refer to Instagram’s terms or consult a lawyer.
Want to learn how to create Reels and grow your following, without having to dance?
Our friend Laura Burden at Burden Brand Management grew her Instagram following from 3k to 35k followers (and counting) simply by adding 2-3 simple Reels per week to her account.
She teaches you how to do the same.
We bought the course ourselves and it’s worth every penny!
Check out the course Reel Talk, by our friends at B Squared Social.
Want a little hand with Reels?
Download our FREE Reels Helper Kit, that includes Reels Covers templates, Caption templates and even a couple of templates for Reels made entirely in Canva and ready to be customized.
Disclaimer: this article is not intended to give you legal advice or advise you on how you should and should not use original audios and copyrighted music on Instagram. Please refer to Instagram’s terms or consult a lawyer.
Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and Done For You content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021). Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneur and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.