This seems like another effort by Meta to keep up with TikTok, though I’m not sure how much practical value it’ll actually add.

Today, Meta has rolled out a new option to add music tracks to your Instagram Notes, providing another way to engage via the 6-month old Stories-like DM option.

As you can see in this example, now, you’ll be able to include a song in your Note, which will then be highlighted to users in the Notes shelf at the top of their inbox. So they can then tap through and listen to it.

Though, why they would want to, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe if you were sharing a new track with your friends, or looking to highlight a band you know, or your own music. I don’t know, I don’t see a lot of enhancement value in trying to get people to listen to your favorite track of the moment, MySpace-style, but maybe there’s a use case and value that I’m not seeing, which will make it a good addition.

But as noted, it does feel like another effort to chase the TikTok dragon. TikTok has become a key distribution channel for the latest music trends, and has become a big focus for record labels and publishers as a result. TikTok’s culture-shifting power is what plays the most significant role within this, and it feels like IG is just trying to latch onto the same. Like ‘we do music too, see’. That type of thing.

Then again, Notes, in general, doesn’t seem like a major engagement winner in the app, though Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has repeatedly noted (see what I did there) that it’s doing well in his weekly Q and A Stories.

Indeed, according to Meta, Notes has been doing especially well with younger users, with over 100 Million teen accounts sharing a Note in the past 90 days. Meta also says that teen users create notes at 10 times the rate of non-teens, while over 20% of Notes created by teens receive a reply.

Those aren't mind-blowing usage stats, but they do likely reflect that my skepticism is at least partly due to me not being the target audience for the option.

And now teens can also make people listen to their favorite track of the moment via the option.

Which is cool? I don’t know.

Mood - [I Go to Sleep - The Pretenders]