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InstagramInstagram has made it a lot easier to add music to your Stories.  This is coming at an interesting time, as Facebook has recently made a deal with a number of record labels, which means that these artists are available on Instagram as well.  The feature is currently available in Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S.  It’s accessed the same way that you would add stickers and GIFs to your Stories on Instagram.  Is this a feature that people actually want?  Instagram has added a ton of new features over the last couple of years.  In fact, they are now up to 1 billion daily active users, so they must be doing something right.How does this work?  After you take a picture or shoot a video for your Instagram Story, you will want to tap the smiley button at the top right side of the screen.  From there, you will see a new “Music” button on the second line of options.  Hit that and you’ll be taken to a music menu where you can select the music that you want.  The app defaults to showing you popular music – like Drake.  There’s a lot of Drake right now because he dropped his new album last week.  But there are also tabs for looking at music by mood – such as fun, dreamy or suspenseful.  You can also search by genre.  If you know what song you want to be the backdrop for your Story, you can search for it directly.instagram storiesWhat happens next is that Instagram will put that song right over top of your photo or video and then allow you to customize the length of time it plays as well as where in the song the music starts.  It’s kind of a neat feature, but is it that unique?  Don’t get me wrong, I think that Instagram is doing well when it comes to their features, but it makes you wonder why they’re adding this specific feature.  You can already send songs to your Instagram Story through Spotify.  While I realize that you’re just posting the song, it’s still a music feature.  Was this something that people specifically wanted?  Or is it just Instagram giving us one more feature?I say that last question, a little tongue-in-cheek.  Instagram is notorious for stealing Snapchat features.  We all know that.  But are they now just adding features for the sake of it?  There’s a saying that “all press is good press”.  And new features puts Instagram in the news every week – or it seems that way.instagramI would also like to pose the question – is this in an attempt to detract from things going on at Facebook?  That’s not to say that the features aren’t going to be great for the app, but it does make you wonder what their motivations are for doing it in the first place.  Facebook is still in the hot seat, and there is no number of filters or GIFs or features that Instagram can add that will detract from that.  If they release another feature within the next two weeks, my guess is there’s method to their madness, and it’s not about giving users what they want.