How to promote your music on Instagram

Instagram gives a musician two audiences. Your followers see your posts and Stories. People who don't follow you yet find you through Reels, which Instagram recommends in the Reels tab and Explore. Promoting music on Instagram means using both: Reels to reach new listeners, and Stories, posts and your profile to turn them into people who follow you and play the song.

This guide covers how each part works, from Instagram's own help pages and creator blog, and how Instagram fits into a release. It's one channel in our guide to promoting your music.

Reels: how new listeners find you

Reels are Instagram's short vertical videos, and they're the part of Instagram built to reach people beyond your followers. Instagram's help page on recording a reel says you can record up to 20 minutes, but reels over 3 minutes won't be recommended to new audiences. In its creator blog, Instagram says reels up to 3 minutes are eligible to be seen by non-followers in places like the Reels tab and Explore, and it advises creators to post original content consistently.

For a song, shorter usually works better. What makes a music reel land:

• The hook first. Start on the chorus, the drop or the line people will remember.
• Something to watch. You playing it, the room it was made in, the lyrics on screen, a story told in a few lines of text.
• Your own footage. Instagram's advice to post original content is a good fit for musicians: nobody else has footage of you making your song.
• A cover that reads. The cover image shows on your profile grid. Instagram lets you pick a frame or upload your own.

The same vertical clip can go to TikTok and YouTube Shorts as well. See promoting music on TikTok and YouTube Shorts for musicians.

Your song as a sound

Every reel has audio, and on Instagram audio is something people find and reuse. Instagram's page on what audio you can use in a reel explains how it's credited:

• Original audio you record or upload shows your username, and on a public account other people can make reels with it.
• Licensed music must be attributed to the artist and carry the track name.
• When Instagram detects that a reel uses licensed music, it changes the credit to the artist and song title and adds the reel to the song's audio page, where more people may find it.

That audio page is where your song collects every reel made with it, yours and other people's. Each new reel on it is another way into the song. Instagram's creator blog also says adding audio to photos and carousels can help them appear in the Reels tab, so a picture post can carry the song too.

Trial reels: test with people who don't follow you

Instagram's creator blog describes trial reels: you share a reel with non-followers first, and if you're happy with how it does, you share it with your followers too. For a musician, that's a way to try different clips of the same song (a different hook, a different visual, a different line on screen) and keep the ones that land.

Stories: keep your followers close

Stories are where the people who already follow you hear what's happening. They're informal, which suits the day-to-day of a release: the cover arriving, a studio moment, the mastered track playing in the car.

Instagram's sticker list includes stickers that fit a release well: a countdown to release day, a link to the pre-save or the release, music, a poll or questions to ask fans which song or clip comes next. Save the release's Stories as a highlight on your profile so new visitors see them too.

Your profile and the link in bio

Someone who likes a reel taps through to your profile. In a few seconds it should tell them who you are and where to hear the song.

• A bio line that names your sound and the current release.
• One link that opens the release: a pre-save before release day, the release in their streaming app from the day itself. An artist page that plays your songs works well here, because it stays the same link from release to release.
• A grid that looks like the artist they heard: recent reels, the cover, photos from this period.

When every caption says "link in bio", the bio link is doing the work of every post, so check it whenever a release moves from pre-save to out.

Instagram across a release

Instagram works best spread across the release, in three phases:

• Before release day: the announcement, the cover reveal, the hook in a reel, a countdown in Stories, the pre-save in your bio.
• Release day: the song is out, the link in your bio opens it, reels and Stories say so.
• The weeks after: new clips on the same song, reactions, a live version, the playlists it's on.

The rest of a release plan is in our music marketing plan guide, and post ideas for musicians has ideas for what to film.

Instagram posts in Audora

When you release with Audora, it plans a promotion campaign around your release day, and Instagram is part of it. Every post is written in your voice about your release, with its caption, hashtags and the picture or video it needs, and you approve what goes out. Approved posts publish to your connected Instagram account.

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• Videos made from your song with your own photos, logo, colors and font: lyric videos that start on your chorus, song teasers and behind-the-song clips. Your first video is on us.
• A Reel made on your song names its sound after you and the song, so every video that uses it credits you.
• Try a Reel with people who don't follow you yet, then share it with your followers if it does well.
• Invite collaborators to a post, picked from your release's credits, and turn a picture post into a carousel with your own photos and clips.
• Pick the cover for a Reel from your Library or an upload, and post your first comment with the hashtags or the credits.
• Every post that went out shows its own numbers from the next morning, as Instagram reports them.

Instagram is one channel; the release around it gets the rest, from the editorial pitch to the playlists shown back to you, set out in what every track gets. Your account holds the dated steps for your release, and Audora keeps changing them (adding, dropping, moving them) as it learns what works for its artists.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (Stories included) and Facebook Pages post automatically, and nothing goes out until you approve it. Stories carry no link sticker, so your release link goes in your bio.