How to Put Music on an Instagram Story Without a Sticker

The Instagram music sticker can be a great way to add a vibe to your Story, but let's be honest - it doesn't always fit your aesthetic. Whether it's covering a key part of your photo, clashing with your brand's clean look, or you just want something different, you need a way to get a soundtrack on your Story without the clunky sticker. This guide will walk you through several easy and effective methods to add any song you want to your Instagram Story, completely free of the default sticker and lyrics.

Why Would You Want to Add Music Without the Sticker?

You might be wondering if it's worth the extra effort. For creators, marketers, and brands who care about their visual identity, the answer is a big yes. Bypassing the native sticker gives you complete creative control over your content and helps you stand out from the noise. It elevates the entire viewing experience.

• A Clean and Professional Aesthetic: Sometimes, the music sticker is just visual clutter. It’s colorful, it moves, and it draws attention away from your actual image or video. Adding audio seamlessly without a sticker makes your Story look more intentional, cinematic, and professional. It feels less like a default social media post and more like a piece of curated content.
• Uninterrupted Visual Storytelling: Your photo or video should be the star of the show. The sticker can block important details, cover faces, or disrupt the composition you worked hard to create. By embedding the music directly into your video clip, you ensure that your audience sees exactly what you want them to see, while the audio enhances the mood in the background.
• Maintaining Brand Consistency: Strong brands have a consistent visual language. The music sticker, with its varying fonts and colors dictated by Instagram, might not align with your specific branding guidelines. Removing it allows you to maintain total control over every visual element that appears on your account, reinforcing your brand identity with every Story.

Method 1: The Screen-Record and Hide Technique

This is a clever workaround you can do in just a few minutes using your phone, a music streaming app, and the Instagram app itself. It doesn't require downloading any new video editors, making it a great option when you're in a pinch. It works best for adding background music to a static photo.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Choose Your Song: Open your preferred music app (like Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube Music). Find the song you want to use and navigate to the part you'd like to feature in your Story. Pro-tip: Open the full-screen "Now Playing" view, as it often has album art or cool visuals that are better to record than a playlist menu.
2. Screen Record the Audio Clip: Start your phone's screen recording feature and play the snippet of the song you want. Let it play for at least 15 seconds to create a full Story clip. Once you've captured the audio, stop the recording. The video will save directly to your phone's photo library.
3. Prepare Your Instagram Story: Open Instagram and start a new Story. Select the photo you want to use as the visual background. This will be the main image in your Story.
4. Add the Screen Recording "Over" Your Photo:
   • On an iPhone, go to your Photos app, find the screen recording, tap the "Share" icon, and select "Copy." Go back to your Instagram Story draft, and a small pop-up should appear titled "Add sticker." Tap it, and your video will be pasted onto your photo. In some cases you just switch app and get the sticker prompt.
   • On an Android, it’s often easiest to use the sticker tray. In your Story draft, tap the sticker icon and look for the “add from camera roll” or gallery sticker. Select your screen recording from there.
5. The Final, Most Important Step: Hide the Video! This is how you get the music without seeing the video player. Once the screen-recorded video is on your Story, use your fingers to pinch and shrink it down to be as small as possible. Then, drag it off the main screen or cleverly hide it behind another sticker. You can place something like a temperature sticker, location tag, or even a GIF right on top of it. Once it's completely hidden, your audience won't see the video, but they will hear the audio playing seamlessly in the background.
6. Post It: Trim your Story to the desired length and publish it. The audio from your tiny, hidden video will play over your static image, no Instagram music sticker in sight!

Keep in Mind: This method is simple, but it's not perfect. Audio quality can sometimes be slightly reduced, and aligning things just right can be a bit fiddly. It's a fantastic hack for quick, simple Stories, but for higher-quality or video-based content, our next method is the way to go.

Method 2: Use a Mobile Video Editing App for a Polished Result

For the most professional finish and absolute creative freedom, using a third-party video editing app is your best bet. This method allows you to combine any video clip or static image with any audio file, giving you a shareable video that you can upload directly to your Instagram Story - no tricks or hiding required. Popular and user-friendly apps like InShot, CapCut, and Splice work wonders for this.

Step-by-Step Instructions (Using InShot as an Example):

While the exact steps might vary slightly between apps, the basic workflow is remarkably similar across all the top video editors.

1. Start a New Project: Download and open your chosen video editing app (we'll use InShot for this example). Tap on the "Video" button to create a new project.
2. Import Your Visuals: The app will open your camera roll. From here, you can select a video clip you want to add music to. If you just want to put music over a static image, you can select the "Photo" tab in your library and choose your picture, the app will convert it into a video clip for you.
3. Select the Correct Format: Before you do anything else, make sure your project is sized for Instagram Stories. In InShot, look for the "Canvas" tool. Tap it and select the 9:16 ratio, which is the standard vertical format for Stories, Reels, and TikToks. Adjust your photo or video to fill the screen correctly.
4. Add Your Music: Now for the main event. Look for the "Music" or "Audio" icon in the editing timeline (it’s usually represented by a musical note). Tap it, and you'll get several options for adding a song:
   • From Their Library: Many apps come with a small library of royalty-free sound effects and tunes.
   • From Files/Your Music: On iOS, you can sometimes access music purchased through iTunes. On Android, you may be able to browse local music files stored on your device.
   • Extract Audio from Video: This is the most common modern method, as few people store MP3 files locally anymore. Simply use your phone to screen record a video containing the song you want, then use your video editor's "extract audio" feature to pull the sound directly from that clip.
5. Edit and Sync Your Audio: Once the song is in your project timeline, you can drag the audio clip to line it up perfectly with your video. You can trim the beginning and end, adjust the volume, and even add fade-in or fade-out effects for a smoother transition. Take a moment to sync a beat drop with a key action in your video - it makes a huge difference!
6. Export and Upload: When you're happy with your creation, tap the "Export" or "Share" button (usually in the top right corner). Choose a high resolution (1080p is perfect for Instagram) and frame rate (30fps is standard). The app will render the video and save it to your phone's camera roll. From there, just open Instagram, create a new Story, and upload your perfectly edited video.

A Note on Copyright for Businesses

This is extremely important for anyone using a business or creator account. While Instagram's sticker provides you with commercially licensed music, adding a copyrighted popular song on your own - especially to promotional content - can violate copyright law. Instagram’s system may detect the copyrighted audio and remove your Story or mute the sound.

What Should Brands Do? To stay safe and professional, use subscription-based, royalty-free music services like Epidemic Sound, Artlist, or Soundstripe. These platforms give you access to huge libraries of high-quality music that you can legally use in your branded content across all social platforms without fear of copyright strikes. You can download the tracks to your device and import them into your chosen video editor following the steps above.

Final Thoughts

Adding music to your Instagram Stories without the distracting sticker is an excellent way to elevate your branding and create more immersive, professional-looking content. Whether you opt for a quick screen-record hack for a static post or dive into a video editing app for full control, both methods give you the power to break free from Instagram's default look and make your Stories truly your own.

We know that creating high-quality, custom visual content like this is only one part of the puzzle. Once you've perfected your editing workflow, you still need to consistently plan and publish everything without the process getting messy. We built Postbase because we believe your tools should make this easier, not harder. After designing your flawless, sticker-free Story, our visual calendar helps you see your entire week's content at a glance, and our rock-solid video scheduling ensures it goes live exactly when planned, every time.