If you promote your music on Instagram, the way your posts are sized affects how professional your content looks. Cropped artwork, awkward framing, or poorly formatted videos can make even good content feel sloppy. The guidelines below summarize the key dimensions so your posts appear clean and consistent.

Instagram Post Sizes (Images)

Instagram supports three image orientations: square, landscape, and vertical. In the main feed, posts are displayed in a square grid on your profile, so composition should account for potential cropping.

Square posts

  • Size: 1080 × 1080 pixels

  • Aspect ratio: 1:1

This is the safest format because it appears exactly the same in both the feed and the profile grid.

Landscape posts

  • Size: 1080 × 566 pixels

  • Aspect ratio: 1.91:1

Useful for studio shots, band photos, or wide scenes.

Vertical posts

  • Size: 1080 × 1350 pixels

  • Aspect ratio: 4:5

Vertical posts take up more space in the feed, which can increase visibility while users scroll.

Instagram Video Post Sizes

Video posts follow the same basic dimensions as image posts.

Supported aspect ratios

  • Between 1.91:1 and 4:5

Recommended horizontal video

  • 16:9 aspect ratio

Most smartphones record horizontal video in 16:9, so keeping that format usually looks the most natural.

Technical limits

  • Maximum file size: 4 GB

  • Maximum length: 60 seconds

Short performance clips, studio previews, or gear demos often work well in this format.

Instagram Story Sizes

Stories fill the entire smartphone screen, so vertical content works best.

Recommended size

  • 1080 × 1920 pixels

  • Aspect ratio: 9:16

This applies to both photos and videos.

Display timing

  • Images display for 5 seconds

  • Videos play in 15-second segments

Videos longer than 15 seconds are automatically split into multiple segments, up to about one minute per recording.

Stories are useful for informal updates: quick songwriting clips, rehearsal moments, polls, or short announcements. Adding hashtags, location tags, and mentions can also help stories reach more viewers.

Reels Video Sizes

Reels are currently one of Instagram’s main discovery formats.

Recommended size

  • 1080 × 1920 pixels

  • Aspect ratio: 9:16 (vertical)

Instagram prioritizes full-screen vertical video.

How Reels appear in different places

  • Feed: displayed at 4:5

  • Profile grid: cropped to 1:1

  • Reels tab: shown as 9:16

Because of this cropping, keep important elements—faces, text, logos—toward the center of the frame.

You can also create a custom cover image for your Reel. Tools such as Adobe Express allow you to extract a frame from the video or design a separate thumbnail sized correctly for Instagram.

With your cover purchase from music-artwork.com, you are receiving for FREE* 3 additional artworks of your cover design, perfectly sized and ready for immediate use across your social media channels:

  • YouTube Cover (Optimized for your video cover)
  • Instagram Post (Ideal for a high-impact feed post)
  • Instagram/FB Story (Perfect for engaging vertical content)

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Practical Tip

When designing cover art, promo graphics, or video captions, keep the center of the frame “safe.” Since Instagram crops content differently across the feed, grid, and Reels tab, elements placed too close to the edges may get cut off.