Instagram Reels for Musicians

Nowadays, digital music’s landscape is fully flooded with a variety of platforms that have given musicians a way to reach out to their audiences.

Yet, with so many platforms, it has become even more important to penetrate the digital media all around by 360 degrees to reach out to the maximum number of people and to express your talent to the audience around the globe.

A lot of platforms have gained popularity among musicians of the world for this purpose including Spotify, Soundcharts, Hubspot, show.com, and much more.

Recently, Instagram has made an entry into this club with a new feature of the Reel that is a very short-timed video, but it can prove as a striking source to enhance the number of your audience and add tremendous people in your fan base because of your cool content!

Let’s dig deeper into the concepts.

What are reels and what are their unique features?

The reel is Instagram’s new short-video creation tool of anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds. Reels are present in a separate tab in your Instagram profile, it is said to be a Tiktok clone because of quite the similarities between the two. It is an attempt by Instagram to maintain dominance in the social video landscape.

Reels are extremely helpful for musicians to set up themselves on a platform with a global audience in a better and an eye-catchy way.

What are its main features and how to make an Instagram reel music video?

Your app must be on its latest version in order to exhibit the section of reels. It can be visible at 152 versions yet the most latest one is 153.

Now, open the camera and you will notice a new simplified interface with 3 choices at the bottom, they are: “live, stories, and reels”.

When you select reel there will be the various controls popping up on the left side of the screen, four actions mainly along with several others. They are its main features as explained in detail below.

Key Features On Instagram Reels

• Audio: will allow users to either choose from the music catalog given by Instagram. or you can sing along with any instrument you will be playing meanwhile.

• Speed: will let control how slow or fast your video can be recorded, ranging from 0.3x to 3x.

• AR Effects: whatever you call them usually; filters or lenses, you can record one clip with one filter and have another effect for the second clip. For the final reel with multiple clips, you’ll have to add them up. When you will scroll towards the right you will come across hundreds of additional effects as well, you can apply them too to your recording video. You have the platform to play here according to your preferences, go funky or go simple, your choice!

• Timer: here users can select the duration of the desired length for your video; the timer will start before the recording start and will automatically end the video at your set time limit between 3 to 15 seconds.

• A special frame for your video to add ghost or align effect, to use lines from the previous clip’s frame.

• You can zoom in and out just by sliding the thumb up and down, just like you normally would do.

• Along with these features, you can add media from your mobile gallery, something Tiktok won’t allow you to do, so that’s definitely a plus! You can scrub through your whole video just by swiping across the screen and can also spectate your reel by pressing that back arrow.

• After recording, you do have access to more Instagram stickers and a variety of new filters enhance your music skills!

There is an additional option after completion of the whole procedure of recording to add your reel into your feed; in that case, it will be visible to your followers on your wall as well.

Obviously, as a musician to gain more popularity for your art, your Instagram account should be public for the world to be impressed with your beats!

Right now, you can’t edit and delete your uploaded clips. It is permissible just for your latest clips.

Controversy

The reels are just like TikTok except for less controversy; Instagram has launched it as a rival for TikTok. During the past month of July TikTok has been banned in India with a controversial accusation of national data being stolen via it claimed by the Indian govt.

The same accusation had also been the stance of the US, so after a successful launch and testing of Reels in Brazil, France, and Germany earlier, Instagram has launched Reels in most parts of the world on 5 August 2020.

Till now, it is stated to be better as compared to Tiktok both content-wise and due to some unique modalities too. Careful scrutiny by the Instagram team is also assured by the launchers to avoid making cringe content viral as compared to Tiktok, this additional managerial benefit reels will have over the TikTok.

What are tips for musicians to make good use out of it?

To make your song reach a greater number of audiences than before, there are few tricks that will boost up your views, popularity, eventually getting you featured in the “reel explore” exclusively by Instagram.

Honestly, it’s up to you how you make your music and what the lyrics to your song are, but they must be catchy and unique enough to expect a massive response from audiences. After all, music is what sets your soul on fire!

If your song is registered with the Instagram music catalog, there are two ways to deal with it:

• Either you will have to sing it and make a reel video for it.

• Or there are various sites to get it done for you including the CD baby and other similar websites.

• If your song is already available on Instagram for making stories, it will be available for reels too.

• Give a good caption to the video, people with the same interest in exploring the grid will find your song or music in their reels section, resultantly they can find your content amusing and your content eventually can go viral.

• The caption can contain trendy and relevant hashtags too.

• Your video can be viewed by anyone, as long as your account is public, it will appear in anyone’s reel feed based on their interests and other videos in their explore grid.

• Along with all this hassle from your side, you will have to motivate your followers to use your music in the background of their reels, for dancing videos if its genre is hip-hop or any other that could go with dancing as well. Moreover, motivate your audiences to use your music for lip-syncing and they are more than welcome if they want to sing it in their reels as well.

• Whenever someone makes a video using your music or song, for its reference your song will be mentioned there by Instagram music catalog or there will be your profile’s link given.

• Instagram owners are looking forward to monetizing the reels and creating it a platform for genuine content creators to earn from it as well.

Conclusion

This new feature of the Instagram reel is indeed a way to go for any musician regardless of their fan base.

Easily understandable features, variety of cool filters with just one finger swipe have opened doors for creative content makers of any kind ranging from actors to musicians and singers.
Not only for content creators but their fan bases also are at the doorstep of creating many entertaining videos by using a variety of music registered with the Instagram catalog.

The unregistered music is also just one step away from getting viral after an Instagram user thinks to sing it. All the proposed boundaries of cultures and music are on the verge of breakage with just one reel recording.

With monetization expected, it can become a larger source of employment for musicians; can bring acknowledgment for content writers, audiences for the underrated singers, and much more.

Stay tuned for any new updates on this amazing innovation on Instagram in the days to come!

If you’d like to take a look at a video description regarding Instagram reels from Sam Sheffer, click here.