Instagram Should Support Multiple Audio Tracks — A Developer’s Perspective

As a backend developer and a long-time Instagram user, I often think about how product decisions impact user experience and business reach.

One such idea that I strongly believe could level up Instagram's global appeal is this: support multiple audio tracks in a single video post — just like YouTube or Netflix.

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🚩 The Problem

Creators and businesses often want to publish videos in multiple languages — for example, English, Hindi, and Tamil, Kannada — to reach a wider audience.

Currently, the only way to do this is:

• Upload separate videos for each language

• Add subtitles (which many users ignore or find distracting)

• Hope users find the right version

This splits engagement, makes analytics messy, and wastes time and energy.

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💡 The Idea: Multi-Audio Track Support

Instagram should allow users to upload a video with multiple audio tracks — one video post, several language options.

Just like streaming platforms, the viewer would:

• Tap a small audio/language icon

• Choose their preferred language track

• Enjoy the same visual content with personalized audio

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🎯 Why This Matters

• 🌍 Wider Reach: Brands and creators can engage multilingual audiences in one post

• 📊 Better Analytics: All engagement tracked in a single place

• 📈 More Accessibility: Helps people connect in the language they understand best

• 🛠️ Content Reusability: No need to duplicate videos just for language

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🔧 Developer Thoughts

From a tech perspective, this could be implemented in one of two ways:

1. Use multi-audio MP4 containers (common in media)

2. Add backend support for uploading audio tracks per language

3. Let the Instagram video player switch tracks based on user preference

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🗣️ Closing Thoughts

This feature could make a big difference — especially for global creators and small businesses.

I plan to submit this as a feature request to Meta, but I also wanted to share it here to gather feedback and ideas from the dev and creator community.

If you're a creator, developer, or someone who agrees this would be useful — feel free to share, comment, or tag someone at Instagram. Let’s make this happen!

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Thanks for reading 🙌
– Anusha, Backend Developer