How to Snapchat with Music Playing from Your Phone

Music makes everything a lot more fun. Whether you're posting a video on Instagram, Snapchat or one of the many other short video sharing apps out there, adding background music to videos has become a pretty big trend. 

Integrating music into videos has always been difficult for Snapchat, which doesn't let users upload prerecorded videos or use third-party apps. But now thanks to an update to the app, Snapchat lets you play music on your device so it can be recorded in your video messages that you send to friends or post as stories.

It's pretty easy to do, and you don't really need to take any complicated extra steps within the Snapchat app to put music in your videos. Here are the exact steps you need to follow:

1. Download or update the Snapchat app on your device. For music recordings in your videos to work, you need to make sure you have the latest version of Snapchat. It's available for both iOS and Android devices.
2. Open up your favorite music app and play any track you want. Whether it's iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, SoundCould or any other app, as long as it plays music on your phone, you can use it with Snapchat. Check out these free music apps if you need some suggestions. 
3. Open up Snapchat (with the music still playing on your device from your music app) and record your video message. Hold the big red button down to record your video message, and it will record all the music your device is playing at the same time. 

1. Before posting it, quickly navigate away from the Snapchat app (without closing it down completely) so you can pause your music app and then go back to Snapchat to watch/listen to your video preview. After you've filmed your video, you can either go ahead and just post it, or you can check out the preview first. You'll probably need to pause the music that's still playing in your music app first, which makes for a bit of an awkward few seconds as you try to get out of Snapchat, open up your music app to hit pause and then quickly get back into Snapchat as fast as possible. If you do it quick, your video preview won't be erased and you'll still be able to post it. 

1. Send it to your friends or post it as a story. If you're happy with your video preview and the music playing along with it, go ahead and post it!

Keep in mind that Snapchat records the music at a pretty high volume, so consider turning it down in your music app if you want your own voice or other background sounds in your video to be heard through the music.

Although it's not ideal to have to leave the Snapchat app to pause the music playing from another app, the addition of a music feature in Snapchat is something that brings it more up to speed with other competing social video apps—particularly Instagram.

Prior to this update, if you wanted music to play in your Snapchat videos, you needed another device or computer to play it. Users also took advantage of the third-party music app Mindie before Snapchat cut off its access.