Instagram Introduces a New 'Audio' Tab to its Search Options to Increase Reel Engagement

Instagram has introduced the ability to browse for audio within the app's search tab, enabling the user to get into music-related trends, and its use is particularly emphasized on making Reels.

As seen here, when you search on Instagram, you can now switch to a new 'Audio' tab, which will showcase the numerous tunes available for use in the app. When you choose a track, you'll see a TikTok-style display of Reels that have used that song's samples.

Users could then save the audio for later use, as well as getting a comprehensive summary of relevant trends and snippets to help you become inspired.

It's almost the same with a feature in TikTok, with the 'Sounds' tab replicated down to the example clips that use each track.

In a larger perspective, this isn't anything new at all. However, with Instagram attempting to increase Reels usage in order to compete with TikTok, it stands to reason for them to stay on top of usage trends and make related discovery as easy as possible.

However, will this encourage more people to make popular Reels?

Perhaps. It undoubtedly plays an important part on TikTok, and with equivalent capacity in Reels, it will also aid in optimizing usage.

This happens to be the same day as YouTube launches a new ad campaign promoting how to achieve the same thing with its own TikTok-like Shorts feature.

As a matter of fact, these features are all the same, and they're becoming more similar every day. And, as TikTok grows in popularity among younger audiences, you can assume that Instagram and YouTube will keep adding replica tools in an attempt to stem user migration and prevent TikTok from stealing some of their audiences.

Younger users' trends can result in much larger changes, as we saw when Facebook eclipsed MySpace. Though TikTok isn't quite ready to take over the big blue app anytime soon, it's certainly gaining ground in many ways.