Instagram is testing a new feature within the app which will allow users to add songs to their photo carousel. For those who are not familiar, an Instagram carousel is a post containing more than one photo or video, which users can view by swiping left on a post through the phone app.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on his Instagram broadcast channel, stating that the tool is already available in a “few countries with more to come.”
Instagram already has a similar feature, which allows users to tag songs to individual photos but now. But with the new feature, instead of simply listening to a track while looking at a single photo, users will now have more pictures and time to listen to the music as they swipe through the pictures in a carousel.
Instagram to add music to carousel
Meanwhile, the Meta CEO also announced that Instagram is testing a new way to add music to carousel. The platform will let users select and attach a portion of a song as their carousel, similar to adding music to an individual post or Reel. With this, others will be able to see the name of the song and artist above your status.
Meanwhile, AI recommendations have driven a more than 24 per cent increase in time spent on Instagram since Meta launched TikTok-rival short-video app Reels.
Reels increasing overall app engagement.
“Reels also continue to become more social with people resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, doubling over the last six months. Reels are also increasing overall app engagement and we believe that we’re gaining share in short-form video too,” Zuckerberg said during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
The AI is also improving monetisation and Reels monetisation efficiency is up over 30 per cent on Instagram and over 40 per cent on Facebook quarter-over-quarter, he announced. “We have seen Reels time become more incremental to overall engagement on our services as we continue to improve our recommendation system,” Zuckerberg added.
Earlier this month, Meta announced that it is rebranding its company name from Facebook to reflect its vision of building the metaverse — a shared virtual environment where people can interact in new ways. The company said that Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and other apps will retain their own branding and identity under the Meta umbrella.
