How to Use One Song for Multiple Instagram Stories

Tired of your Instagram Stories feeling disjointed? Using a single, continuous song that flows seamlessly across multiple slides is a professional touch that turns a simple Story into a compelling narrative. This guide will show you exactly how to add one song across several Instagram Story slides, creating a mini-movie effect that keeps your followers hooked from start to finish. We'll cover the simple built-in method and a more advanced technique using external apps for a flawless result.

Why Does Continuous Music on Instagram Stories Matter?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." A single, uninterrupted track does more than just add background noise. It creates a mood, establishes a pace, and provides a cohesive thread that ties all your photos and videos together. When viewers tap through your Story, the continuous audio makes the experience feel smoother and more polished, much like watching a professionally edited video. It encourages them to watch all the way through to the end.

This is especially effective for:

• Event Recaps: Sharing highlights from a party, wedding, or conference.
• Travel Vlogs: Taking followers on a journey through a day of exploration.
• Behind-the-Scenes: Showcasing a product's creation process or a "day in the life."
• Tutorials or How-Tos: Guiding viewers through a process step-by-step.

In short, it transforms a collection of separate clips into a single, unified story. It’s a small detail that makes a big impact on engagement and brand perception.

Method 1: The Manual Approach Using Instagram's Music Sticker

This is the quick-and-dirty method using only the Instagram app. It’s perfect if you're in a hurry and don't want to use another app. The downside is that it can be tricky to get the song timing perfectly seamless, but with a little care, it works well enough.

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Create Your First Story Slide: Open Instagram, swipe to the Story camera, and either take a photo/video or upload one from your camera roll.
2. Add the Music Sticker: Tap the sticker icon (the square smiley face) and select the "Music" sticker.
3. Choose Your Song: Search for the song you want to use. Once you select it, Instagram will automatically bring up the trimming tool.
4. Trim the First Segment: By default, an Instagram Story slide is 15 seconds long. Drag the selector at the bottom of the screen so that the song segment starts right at the beginning (0:00) and covers the first 15 seconds. You can choose how the lyrics appear or just use the album art sticker.
5. Publish the First Slide: Place the sticker where you want it, and post your Story.
6. Create Your Second Story Slide: Immediately start a new Story. Add your next photo or video clip.
7. Add the Same Song: Go back to the Music sticker and search for the exact same song you used in the first slide.
8. Trim the Second Segment: This is the most important part. When the trimming tool appears, slide the selector so that it begins exactly where the first clip ended. If your first clip was 15 seconds long, start this one at the 0:15 mark. Instagram's interface makes this fairly easy, as you can see the timestamps. Adjust it to cover the next section of the song (e.g., from 0:15 to 0:30).
9. Repeat for All Slides: Continue this process for every slide you want to add. For the third slide, you’d start the music at the 0:30 mark, for the fourth at 0:45, and so on.

A quick tip: If your music sticker vanishes, try resizing it to be very small and hiding it behind another sticker or GIF, or sliding it completely off-screen. This keeps the music playing without cluttering your visual.

Method 2: The Pro Approach for a Flawless Flow (Using a Video Editor)

While the manual method works, it’s not perfect. It can be hard to align the music perfectly, and there might be a slight, jarring jump in the audio as viewers tap from one slide to the next. For a truly professional, seamless result, a third-party video editing app is the best way to go. This approach involves creating one long video with your chosen music and then letting Instagram split it up for you.

Popular and user-friendly video editing apps for this include CapCut, InShot, and Splice. The steps are generally the same across all platforms.

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Gather Your Media: Before you even open the app, decide which photos and video clips you want to use. Put them into a dedicated album on your phone to make them easy to find.
2. Start a New Project in Your Editing App: Open your chosen app and create a new project. The first thing you should do is set the aspect ratio. For Instagram Stories, you must use 9:16. This will format your canvas as a vertical video.
3. Import Your Photos and Videos: Add all the media you collected from your camera roll to the project's timeline and arrange them in the order you'd like your story to play out.
4. Add Your Music: Find the “Audio” or “Music” option in the app. You can either search the app’s library for a track or import a sound file you already have downloaded on your phone. Add the song to the audio track on your timeline. It will now run underneath all your visual clips.
5. Adjust Pacing and Timing: This is where the magic happens. Play the video back and adjust the duration of each photo or the length of each video clip. You can trim clips to fit the beat, make sure a photo changes right on a chorus, or sync an action in a video with a beat drop. This is how you make your content feel truly edited and intentional.
   • Drag the ends of clips to shorten or lengthen them.
   • Split clips to remove unnecessary parts.
   • Move clips around on the timeline to change their order.
6. Check the Total Length: Instagram automatically splits videos up to 60 seconds long into four 15-second Story slides. For the most seamless experience, try to keep your total edited video under 60 seconds. If it's longer, you'll need to manually export it in 60-second chunks.
7. Export the Final Video: Once you're happy with your video, export it. Choose the highest quality settings available, typically 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps), to look crisp on Instagram. The video will save as one single file in your phone's camera roll.
8. Upload to Instagram: Now for the easy part. Go to the Instagram Story creator and select your newly exported video from your camera roll. When you select a video that's longer than 15 seconds (but under 60 seconds), Instagram will automatically show you a preview of it split into multiple slides at the bottom of the screen. Tap "Next" and post them all at once.

Instagram handles the rest. When published, the slides will play back-to-back with perfectly continuous audio, because it was all one video to begin with. The result is a smooth, professional, and far more engaging Story sequence.

Creative Best Practices to Make Your Stories Stand Out

Now that you know the techniques, here are a few extra tips to elevate your multi-part Stories:

• Sync with the Beat: Use your video editor to align visual changes directly with the music. A transition that hits right on a snare drum or cymbal crash is incredibly satisfying for a viewer.
• Tell a Mini-Story: Think of your Story sequence as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Start with an establishing shot, show the main action in the middle, and end with a concluding photo or a call-to-action. The music should support this narrative arc.
• Let the Music Set the Mood: The song choice is everything. An upbeat, energetic track works well for a workout routine or a party recap. A calm, acoustic song is perfect for a scenic travel diary or a quiet morning routine. Let the music do half the storytelling for you.
• Remember Text and Stickers: Once you’ve uploaded your perfectly edited video sequence to Instagram, you can still add interactive elements like polls, quizzes, question boxes, and text captions on top of each slide before you publish. This adds another layer of engagement to your polished content.

Going the extra mile to create cohesive content shows you care about your audience's experience, which is fundamental to building a strong brand connection on social media.

Final Thoughts

Creating an Instagram Story where one track plays continuously over multiple slides is an excellent way to level up your content, turning a simple update into an engaging and professional narrative. Whether you use the quick manual method or a dedicated video editor for a flawless finish, the key is to create a seamless viewing experience that keeps your audience captivated.

At Postbase, we know that creating great content is only half the battle, planning and scheduling it effectively is what makes a strategy work. It can be a challenge to map out detailed, multi-part Stories like these directly in the app. That's why we built a visual content calendar that helps you see your entire week or month at a glance, making it easy to plan sequences and spot gaps. Our platform is designed from the ground up for modern social media - especially video-heavy formats like Reels and Stories - ensuring that when you hit schedule, your content goes live exactly as you intended, every single time.