How to Get a Full Song on Instagram Reels

You’ve edited the perfect Instagram Reel, timed your cuts to the beat of an amazing song, and then you hit the audio library and realize you’re stuck with a 30- or 60-second clip of the chorus. Getting a full song to play on an Instagram Reel can feel frustratingly impossible, but it’s entirely doable once you understand why the limitation exists and how to work around it. This guide will walk you through the reasons behind audio limits and give you the step-by-step methods to use longer, or even full, songs in your content.

Why Can’t You Use a Full Song on Instagram Reels?

Before we get into the solutions, it helps to understand the problem. The restriction on music length isn’t just an arbitrary choice by Instagram, it’s primarily rooted in two things: music licensing and the format’s design.

• Complex Music Licensing: To offer a massive library of popular music, Instagram pays for millions of licenses from record labels and artists. These agreements are incredibly complex and expensive, and most are specifically for short-form content. A license to use a 30-second clip of a chart-topping song is entirely different from a license to let millions of users stream the entire track. To avoid huge costs and legal issues, Instagram limits most audios to shorter clips.
• The Point of Short-Form Video: Reels are built for quick, engaging, and repeatable content. Historically, with limits of 15, 30, and 60 seconds, longer audio clips weren't necessary. While Reels can now be longer, the core of the format still revolves around brief, attention-grabbing moments.

The Difference Between Personal, Creator, and Business Accounts

You might have noticed that some accounts have a much smaller music library. This is also due to licensing. Creator and Personal accounts typically have access to the full library of commercial music for short clips. Business Accounts, however, often have access only to a royalty-free library. This is because using popular music for direct commercial purposes (like an ad for your product) requires a much more expensive commercial license, which Instagram's general agreement doesn't cover. This is important context for the methods below.

Method 1: The Official Approach (Finding Longer Clips in the Library)

Sometimes, the A-list artists and labels make special agreements with Instagram to allow for longer clips, often up to the full 90-second Reel length. This is your best starting point because it's the easiest method and ensures your Reel is properly linked to the official song page, aiding discoverability. However, finding these longer clips can be hit-or-miss.

How to find and use longer audio clips:

1. Set Your Reel Length to 90 Seconds: On the Reel creation screen, tap the "Length" icon (it usually looks like a circle with '30' or '60' in it) on the left-hand toolbar and select the longest available option, which is often 90 seconds. This is a critical first step.
2. Open the Audio Library: Tap the music note icon to search for audio.
3. Search for Your Song: Type in the song you want to use.
4. Check the Timeline: When you tap a song, a timeline scrubber will appear at the bottom of the screen. Watch this closely. If you can drag the selection window across a track that is 90 seconds long, you’ve found one of the officially licensed longer clips. If it limits you to 30 or 60 seconds, you’ll need to try one of the other methods.

The Trade-Off: While simple and official, this method rarely gets you the entire three-minute song. It gets you the longest clip Instagram is able to offer, which is currently a maximum of 90 seconds for specific, licensed tracks.

Method 2: The Best Solution - Use a Third-Party Video Editor

For complete creative control and to use a full-length song, your best bet is to edit your video outside of Instagram. By adding the song directly to your video clips in an external app, you can bypass Instagram’s audio library completely. The final video is then uploaded to Reels with the sound already embedded.

Step 1: Get the Song

This is the most important part to avoid your video being muted or taken down for copyright infringement. You can't just screen-record a song from Spotify. Instead, you need the actual audio file, preferably one you have the rights to use.

• Royalty-Free Music Services: The safest route. Platforms like Epidemic Sound or Artlist provide high-quality music you can license for social media use. This is perfect for businesses, influencers, and anyone who wants to monetize their content without worrying about copyright strikes.
• Your Own Music: If you're a musician, using your own tracks is the perfect way to promote your work.
• Using Commercial Music (At Your Own Risk): If you must use a popular, commercial song, you need an MP3 file of that track. Understand that doing this means you are uploading copyrighted material without a license. Instagram's algorithm can detect this. Your Reel might be muted, removed, or have its reach limited. For one-off personal projects, the risk might be low, but for brands, it's not recommended.

Step 2: Edit Your Video with a Mobile App

Dozens of user-friendly apps let you combine video clips with an external audio track. CapCut and VN Video Editor are two of the most popular and free options.

Here’s a sample workflow using CapCut:

1. Start a New Project: Open CapCut and tap "New Project." Select the video clips you want in your Reel and add them to the timeline.
2. Mute Original Video Audio: Tap on each individual clip in your timeline and hit the "Volume" icon, then drag it to zero. This prevents the original sound from your camera from competing with the music you're about to add.
3. Add Your Full Song: Tap "Add audio" below the video timeline. Choose "Sounds," and then navigate to where your song file is saved on your device (often under "From device" or a folder icon). Select the full song you acquired in the previous step.
4. Sync Your Clips to the Music: Now for the creative part! Drag your video clips, trim their starts and ends, and arrange them to match the beats, builds, and drops of the full song. This is where you can make your Reel truly dynamic over several minutes, should you choose.
5. Export Your Masterpiece: Once you're happy with the edit, tap the export button (usually in the top right corner). Make sure to choose a high resolution (1080p is great for Instagram) and frame rate (30fps is standard). Save the video to your camera roll.

Step 3: Upload the Final Video to Reels

Now, head back to Instagram.

1. Open the Reels creator but don't add music or record anything.
2. Tap the icon in the bottom-left corner to open your camera roll and select the video you just exported from CapCut.
3. Compose your caption, add hashtags, pick a cover photo, and share. Your video will upload with the full song embedded in it.

The Trade-Off: When you upload a video with pre-existing sound, Instagram will label the audio as "Original Audio" under your username. This means your Reel won't be linked to the official song page for that track, which could slightly reduce its discoverability through that specific song. However, the trade-off is total freedom over the audio, making it the go-to method for creators prioritizing a specific artistic vision.

Method 3: The Clever "Hack" - Stitching Audio Clips Together

This method is a bit more intricate and doesn't exactly get you a full song, but it can help you create a custom, longer audio track using Instagram's own editor. The concept is to use the same song multiple times in different video segments, "stitching" them together to create a continuous track.

How to stitch audio clips:

1. Set Your Reel to 90 Seconds: Again, make sure your project is set to the maximum length.
2. Record or Add Your First Clip: Get your first video segment in place. Let's say it's 15 seconds long.
3. Add the First Piece of Music: Go to the Audio Library, find your song, and set the scrubber to the first 15 seconds (from 0:00 to 0:15).
4. Record or Add Your Second Clip: Now, add the next video segment to your timeline.
5. Add the Second Piece of Music: Go back to the Audio Library, find the exact same song, but this time, slide the scrubber to pick up where you left off (from 0:15 to 0:30).
6. Repeat as Necessary: Continue this pattern until your Reel is complete.

The Trade-Off: This technique is tedious and makes it very difficult to get a seamless transition between audio cuts, you may hear a tiny stutter. It's truly a last-resort option if you must use Instagram’s editor and want a section of a song longer than what the library offers. For most people, Method 2 is far more effective and produces a higher-quality result.

Final Thoughts

In short, while Instagram’s music library limits clip length for complex licensing reasons, you have reliable options. For full creative freedom over your Reel's soundtrack, the best method by far is to add the legally acquired full-length song yourself using an external video editor and upload the final product as a Reel with "Original Audio."

As social media professionals, we know that creating this kind of scroll-stopping content is only half the battle. We actually built Postbase because we were tired of legacy management tools that were clunky and felt dated, especially when handling modern video formats like Reels. Once you've edited your perfect video with the full song, you can use our visual calendar to upload it once, tailor the captions for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and schedule it to go live at the perfect time. We focus on reliability so you never have to double-check if your scheduled content actually published, saving you time and giving you peace of mind.