The Battle for Music has begun…
Towards the end of 2022, Instagram announced that it was launching a new feature where you can add music to still image posts to further enhance the IG experience. Music will no longer be limited to Stories and Reels, as Instagram explains ‘you can now add a soundtrack to your favorite moments to bring them to life’.
This new feature will help provide creators with another tool to enhance their content experience. Creators can add music that is personal to them to their grid posts, allowing for deeper connections to be forged with their followers.
As stated by Vista Social, the integration of songs in Feed posts can greatly enhance its storytelling elements, which aids in cultivating a community and building trust with followers. However, Instagram is not the first social media platform to do this…
TikTok vs Instagram: Grid Posts and Photo swiping
TikTok has championed the addition of music to content since day one. By adding more trendy music, influencers on TikTok can help their content reach a wider audience organically.
In 2022, TikTok introduced Photo Mode, a new tool that seemingly rivals instagram: Photo Mode is a photo slideshow editing tool that mimics the features on instagram, along with the addition of some new features such as the capacity for longer captions and enhanced editing abilities. This Photo Mode also had a new ‘swipe’ feature, which enabled users to slide through the TikTok photo grid posts instead of simply viewing the photos in video form pre-update.
The content that was produced on TikTok with these new features bore a striking resemblance to Instagrams ‘photo dump’ posts, however one main difference between the two apps’ approach to grid posts was that TikTok had the added feature of adding music to its Photo Mode posts.
As a result, users were quick to incorporate Photo Mode’s new features into several creative uses, either in the simple photo sharing through ‘photo dumps’, or by using music to add a storytelling element to their photo content.
The power of music and still images
The latter sparked several trends on TikTok that went viral in early September 2022.
One of them included Azealia Bank’s song ‘Competition’ as the backdrop of the trend where you add a photo of each month of the year with a description of what you did, calling each month an ‘era’ summarizing how you felt that month.
Another example involves Taylor Swift’s song ‘Cardigan’, which sparked the ‘experiences that altered my brain chemistry’ trend, where users would post photos from experiences they lived through that impacted them greatly. This trend was particularly popular with university students that would put photos of various events at their university that were either comedic, such as a funny event that took place during freshers week, or a life changing event such as attending a lecture with a renowned scholar from their field.
Money Maker: Why?
Whilst there are creative motivations for using music in content on TikTok, for influencers there is also a financial incentive that cannot be ignored.
TikTok has been crucial in helping many songs become popular, old or new, due to their unique algorithm which has allowed certain posts to become trends. According to TikTok, 10 out of the 12 number ones on the UK Official Singles Chart in 2022 had a viral moment, and 13 out of the 14 Billboard Hot 100 number ones had been significant trends on TikTok at some point in the year.
There is no denying that TikTok holds an immense power at driving some success for songs. For influencers, this presents them with an opportunity to leverage their platform to musicians to promote their music. Influencers on TikTok can get paid to use certain songs in order to help that song have a wider reach.
Spotify and TikTok have been working together for years now to help songs gain organic growth from payment partnerships with TikTok influencers. TikToker Charlie D’Ameilio, for example, was charging up to $40,000 for one post on TikTok with certain songs back in 2020. Artists have been using the app for a long time now to promote their new music.
This came about due to Covid, as when the ability to produce music videos and run tours was no longer available, artists started diverting their funds to other promotional means. With the incredible success that songs have had on TikTok, perhaps Instagram will take a page out of TikTok’s book and also start promoting music on grid posts on instagram.
A potential trend we could expect to see in 2023 is instagram influencers incorporating music into their brand image by playing specific songs on their instagram feed, and the way that influencers reach their audience could expand from searching hashtags to searching music for specific content.
Dyzio is moving to the music
Music is becoming more and more popular on social media, but how does that impact your business? Does adding music to your content ACTUALLY increase the engagement rate or sales delivered from a post? Will Instagram be able to beat TikTok at its own game and do it better? Well, Dyzio will help answer that for you.
Dyzio is launching a range of features that will enable our customers to evaluate the effectiveness of their content with music vs without music.
It’s possible that adding music on Instagram grid posts could greatly increase an influencer’s engagement rate, which could change the rules on influencer campaigns.
We tested the new feature and here’s what we found…
When trialing this feature on our Dyzio Instagram account, we discovered that due to copyright, Instagram Business Accounts do NOT have access to the large library of licensed music that Creator and Personal accounts can use. The basis of this is that artists don’t want their name attached to a brand, product or service that they do not personally endorse.
However, we subsequently discovered that you CAN actually use the regular music library as a business account if you set your account description to ENTREPRENEUR. You can then hide this in your bio. See this video for step-by-step guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CDiyQUbTNo.
With all these changes on the rise, wouldn’t it be great if your company had an influencer tracking software that keeps up-to-date with all these trends? Book a demo with Dyzio below to see just how much easier your life will be!