Instagram users can now add music to their profile page in a move reminiscent of its social media ancestor, the long lost MySpace.
When users add a song from Instagram’s library to their page, visitors will be able to play a selected 30-second snippet from the chosen track. It’s similar to the process of picking a song for a Reel on Instagram.
Users will be able to choose a new song or new snippet at any time, if they’re looking to let profile visitors know what they’re currently enjoying.
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Thankfully, playback isn’t automatic. The visitor will have to manually play the song snippet in order to hear it. That’s great news for you as a user too, especially if you’re browsing Instagram in public. The feature is launched in collaboration with singer Sabrina Carpenter but doesn’t appear to be widely available right now.
When it is available, you’ll be able to add your own song by heading to your profile page, selecting “edit profile” and then choosing “add music to your profile”. From there you’ll be able to search Instagram’s library for your tune of choice and choose the segment of the song.
The launch of the feature is very much a back to the future moment for social media. Back in the peak of the MySpace days around two decades ago, the tracks selected for the profile page were somewhat of a statement. In some cases it was a teenage mating call.
MySpace was probably the peak method of music discovery in some subcultures at that time – certainly within the emo, punk, and metal scenes where bands had really active pages and could offer a number of uploaded tracks for profile visitors to listen to in full.
It was the advent of Facebook in the mid-to-late noughties that began to see MySpace’s influence wane, as well as the ill-fated sale of the company to News Corp.
