It’s still impossible to know if Instagram’s Reels will eventually be the main element in the app experience or not. However, Instagram is for sure, not leaving anything to chance. Today, Instagram has started another range of updates for Reels to align with the TikTok usage trends.
The latest updates for Reels are about audio; mainly, they help users engage in music trends in the application.
The options that have been added to Reels this week are:
- Save Audio – This will let users save sounds in-app and then use it in their own Reels videos.
- Share Audio Pages – Users can share collections of Reels which use specific audio via DM.
- Audio Browser – Users can search for music and sounds, and the Reels videos that use them
As noted above, the new updates are made to align with the increasing use of audio in remixes and TikTok. It’s more like Vine before that; music has become a key focus for TikTok videos with most clips using famous songs and easy themes.
There has also been a trend of referencing other user audios or videos like Sarah Cooper’s re-creations of quotes from US President Donald Trump
The option ‘Save Audio’ will ease expanding this, as the share audio pages option will assist users in distributing further famous trends. That will likely see wider reach for such by the newly announced integration of Messenger and Instagram Direct. That means that users can share, now, these trends with their contacts in both applications.
This is the second important update for Reels since Instagram announced its launch in August. The first one was allowing the longer 30-second Reels, and also the improved editing options.
The speed of Reels updates indicates that Instagram is planning to develop the product fast to catch up to TikTok – yet with TikTok now looking like it will stay as it is in the USA, Reels’ chance for serious, fast expansion seems to be lost, at least now.
