What is a trending sound?
A trending sound is a clip of audio that’s going viral on social media – especially on Instagram and TikTok.
Instagram Reels are a great way to engage with your community, reach new followers, and grow your brand online, and a trending sound can help Reels reach even more people. You can read more about the power of Reels here.
It’s usually pretty easy to come across a trending track, as it’ll be overlayed on many Reels and TikToks as you scroll through the platform. An example is the song Dance The Night by Dua Lipa, which rose to popularity after the release of the Barbie movie.
Not all trending sounds are lyrical, some are simply short clips of instrumental audio that users have uploaded to the app and made shareable.
Trending sounds for business accounts
While personal accounts can access a wide library of trending songs on Instagram, it can sometimes be harder for business accounts to find them.
Why? It’s all down to copyright concerns.
According to Instagram, “Many accounts have access to our licensed music library, but certain business accounts or types of posts do not. This is because our agreements with rights holders are intended to enable personal, non-commercial uses of music. For those accounts that do not have access to our licensed music library, we have provided them with access to Facebook’s sound collection.”
So never fear, there are still plenty of popular and catchy tracks for you to choose from.
How do you know if a song is trending?
Instagram has made it easier to identify trending audio. On the bottom left-hand corner of a reel, you’ll see an upwards-facing arrow next to the song title if there’s been a jump in its usage.
If you click on the arrow, it will let you know the song title and artist and how many other people have used this song for their reel.
You can ‘save’ the track in the top right-hand corner, making it easier to add to your own video.
From this page, you can also easily find a list of the latest trending songs.
Click on ‘Trending’ below the artist’s name and you will be taken to what Instagram states as the “top 50 audio tracks with a sharp rise in reels usage over the past 30 days”. Go ahead and save a few of your favourites.
Other ways to find trending sounds for your next Reel
Apart from good old-fashioned scrolling, there are a few other ways to find new trending tracks.
Search on TikTok
Did you know you can simply type ‘trending sounds’ or ‘viral sounds’ into the search bar on TikTok and find new audio?
Once you’ve searched it, hit the ‘sounds’ tab and a list will come up for you. You can see how many videos have been made using each audio so far, and you can save these songs for later.
You can filter your search by date and relevance (try finding sounds posted in the last week).
If the song is for a Reel, note down the song title and search for it on Instagram.
Search on Spotify
Search ‘TikTok songs’ on Spotify and you’ll find a few playlists with the latest trending songs. Spotify has its own playlist called Viral Hits which is updated regularly.
You’ll also find playlists Spotify users have made, compiling the latest TikTok dance trends and viral audio. Simply search the songs on Instagram or TikTok and you’re ready to create!
