How to Upload and Get your Music on Instagram Stories?

If you are an Instagram user, you know that you can add music to your stories, but, as a musician did you ever wonder how to upload and get YOUR music on Instagram (stories)?

It can be good revenue as well as a mass exposure source for you and your band. In order to upload and monetize your music, you need a trusty music distributor to upload the tunes to them.

I’ve been in the industry long enough to know this is the most viable way to go about it; how do YOU go about doing all this? Let me explain it all in detail for you. Read on, follow the tips and grow your followers exponentially.

Why is it important to get your music on Instagram stories?

Let’s face it, it is the 21^st century and your music has to be where your audience is. Everybody is now consuming their favorite tunes through internet’s streaming platforms and sharing their favorite artists through social media, commenting with friends and finding new music they love.

So, given this scenario, where should your music be? Exactly, it should in the epicenter of the storm.

You can get some Facebook Ads with some cool pictures and try to make people listen to your music or watch your videos. This will grant you a bigger audience for sure, but it will also cost you continuous money.

What if instead of paying for that ad, you could get people to stream your songs while creating their own content? Your tunes could be the perfect soundtrack for someone else’s life.

This is where Instagram stories come in. Introduced to the platform on August 2016, they allow users to upload content that will expire within 24 hours. This expiration date inspired most users to take their feed very seriously and do crazy stories because they will anyway expire in a heartbeat.

Besides that feature, a constant growing augmented reality filters became available, making the interaction fun and dynamic. Soon after, interactive stickers, polls and finally, music became available for stories only.

This means that for the 15 seconds that a story lasts, you could be streaming any song from a huge catalog. If that song was yours, you could literally be exposed to millions of potential new fans around the world.

Being where your potential fans are is the best way to expose your music to them and grow your audience.

Why do you need a music distributor to get your music on Instagram stories?

Now that you know just how important it is to make your music available to the masses through Instagram stories, you might be scratching the top of your head thinking: “but how do I actually get it there?” Well, this is what we are here to help you out with.

For your music to be available, it has to be uploaded to Facebook’s systems. Facebook owns Instagram after a controversial purchase in 2012 for $1 billion keeping the leadership of the company intact.

When the music feature on Instagram stories began, Facebook landed a deal with all of the major record labels in the world and some independent smaller ones as well. This is why you need a music distributor for your songs to appear on the list to be chosen and added to stories.

It is music distributors who land the deal with Facebook and upload the content of all the artists that work with them and then collect their royalties.

Since Facebook owns Instagram, every time your tunes get played on either platform your music distributor receives your money. This means that with the same deal, you can monetize all of the social media capabilities with your songs; whether it is from your own Artist Page, stories, streaming or any other form.

The three music distributors I recommend to upload your music to Instagram Stories

CDBaby

CDBaby is perhaps the best-known music distributor in the world. They have been around for 22 years and are still going strong.

They went through all the major changes in the music industry starting as a physical distributor of indie bands and now supplying content to every major streaming platform in the world. The company is present worldwide and offers to get your music into 150 streaming platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Google Play Music, and many more.

They offer musicians two very distinct plans: Standard & Pro. They have different characteristics and prices:

• Standard – Single: $9.95 & album: $29
• Pro – Single: $29.95 & album: $69.

You can get your royalties collection on Stories from Instagram and Facebook with the Standard program and they will also collect them from YouTube ID and TV licensing. By hiring the Pro service, you also get physical shipping, song registration and affiliation to BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.

TuneCore

I would say that the main reason to reach out to TuneCore with your music is that they will not touch a cent from your royalties. On top of that they have an agreement with MusixMatch, which is a platform that allows you to upload your song’s lyrics.

If you have a killer song with great lyrics, it can be very useful to display both together on Instagram.

Besides Facebook and Instagram, TuneCore will get your music in 200 countries through 150 stores.

On the other hand, I don’t exactly love the fact that instead of a one-time payment, you need to do yearly payments with them to keep your songs up and playing. The fees are not so high and mostly pay themselves, but they could really catch you off-guard and empty your PayPal account in unexpected moments.

The fees are:

• Single upload – $9.99 (yearly payment).
• Album upload – $29.99 for the first year and $49.99 the second year.
• Ringtone upload – $19.99 (yearly payment).

TuneCore also offers something I think is really great that is songwriter services. Hiring these, you will have a dedicated team of people searching for other versions of your originals out there and get you those royalties. Finally, the cherry of the pie is the team of rights specialists and outstanding customer care for any inconveniences or doubts you might have.

DistroKid

DistroKid is the music distributor with the best price of the market. You get to pay $19.99 to upload unlimited albums and songs for an entire year. Their motto is actually “be prolific” and it is a great way to upload your entire old catalog to a streaming platform in case you haven’t already with a flat fee. They will give you 100% of your royalties and pay them to you on a monthly basis.

Besides the 150+ stores they can get your songs to, you will be able to send your lyrics and upload them to Facebook for Instagram Stories users to display them on their phones.

Finally, the time frame they use to get your music up for streaming is also shorter than competitors. DistroKid is a great platform for prolific artists, labels and bands who want to catch up with their past catalog.

Flat fee for a year of unlimited uploads – $19.99

Requirements: How to prepare your music before sending it to Instagram?

Most distributors in the world not to say all of them will ask your music to have CD-like quality.

This can be high-quality 320 kbps MP3 or lossless WAV or FLAC formats. Be wise in this aspect and don’t upload music that is not finished to your standards.

Remember that once it is on the streaming platform, it will be competing with bands that have virtually unlimited production budgets. Make sure it sounds great before sending it and avoid a bad comparison with first-line musicians.

FAQs about getting your music to Instagram Stories

– How long does it take to get my music on Instagram stories?

Here there are two possible scenarios that can occur. Either you have your music in a music distributor and you want to upload it to Facebook too or you are doing the whole process from scratch. Let’s take a look at each case:

• Uploading your music from scratch – You’ll need to upload your music to the music distributor and sign the agreement with them. This time frame until your music is uploaded (including Facebook and Instagram Stories) is usually two to three weeks.
• Already on a distributor – If this is the case, check the website of the distributor for clues on how to activate the Facebook upload in case it is compatible. This process usually takes between one and three weeks, depending on the distributor.

– How much does Instagram pay?

There is no clear data about how much artists get per stream of their songs. Most major sites like DistroKid are stating “You will get paid” but no info on how much appeared just yet.

– When and how do you get paid by Instagram stories?

If Instagram stories stream works like every other streaming platform in the world, the payment to artists shall be monthly. Although there is no clear data about it, Facebook and YouTube deliver the money every month to distributors.

Conclusion

Every artist wants to be where the action is, get the exposure, grow the fan base and get paid in the way. Instagram Stories are that place in 2020 because virtually every potential fan out there can share your tunes and turn them into the soundtrack of their social-media life.

After reading all the data in this post, you already know how to upload and get your music on Instagram (stories), now it’s time to take action, contact a distributor and go playing in the big leagues.

The world is ready to hear you, don’t keep them waiting!