You reuse Instagram audio by saving the Reel, extracting its sound with a converter tool, then exporting it as an MP3 for other projects. I download the Reel first, either through Instagram’s own save option or a third party downloader, since you can’t pull audio directly from the app. Then I run the file through a Reel to MP3 converter, which strips the video and keeps only the sound. The result works fine for podcasts, voiceovers, or new edits, as long as you check usage rights before publishing.
The short version: to turn a Reel into a reusable audio file, download the Reel as an MP4 first, then run that MP4 through a free audio extractor like VLC or CloudConvert to pull out an MP3 or WAV. If you want someone else’s trending sound rather than your own voiceover, Instagram’s own “save audio” button keeps it locked inside the app on purpose, so you’ll need a different route if you want an actual exportable file.
I get asked this a lot by clients who record their own testimonials, tutorials or podcast clips as Reels first because the format forces them to be short and punchy, then they want that same audio somewhere else. A podcast intro. A voice note for a course. A soundbite for a sales page. It sounds like it should take two minutes. It rarely does, and most of the guides on this sit around online skip the part where it gets fiddly.
Why this is harder than it looks
Instagram doesn’t export a clean, separate audio track when you save a Reel. What you get is a merged file, your voice and the background music baked together into one track. If you added a trending song under your voiceover, that song is now permanently glued to whatever you said. There’s no built-in “split voice from music” button in the app, and this trips people up constantly.
I found this out the hard way with a client last year. She’d filmed a 40 second testimonial Reel for her coaching business, added a soft instrumental underneath, and wanted just her spoken words to use as a podcast intro. We downloaded the Reel, screen recorded it, tried three different extraction sites, and every single version came back with that instrumental humming underneath her voice. In the end we didn’t extract anything. We went back to her raw camera roll footage from before she edited the Reel and pulled the audio from that instead. Twenty minutes of faffing that a two minute job should have been, purely because the finished Reel had already mixed everything together.
That’s the first thing worth knowing before you start: if you have access to the original unedited clip, use that instead of the published Reel. It will save you time every single time.
Method one: turning your own Reel into an audio file
This is the route for your own voiceovers, tutorials, testimonials or spoken content where you’re the one talking.
- Open the Reel in the Instagram app and tap the three dots in the corner
- Choose “Save video” or use the download option in your account settings, which is the same first step covered in detail in how to download any Reel from Instagram to your phone
- Get that MP4 onto your desktop, following the process in how do you convert an Instagram Reel into an MP4 file
- Open VLC Media Player, go to Media, then “Convert / Save”
- Add your MP4, click Convert, and under Profile choose an audio only option like “Audio MP3”
- Pick your save location and hit Start
VLC is free, it works on Windows and Mac, and it takes under a minute to convert a 30 to 60 second clip. If you’d rather not install anything, CloudConvert does the same job in a browser and gives you 25 free conversion minutes a day on the free tier, which is more than enough for a handful of short clips.
One practical note on quality: export at 320kbps if you’re planning to reuse the audio somewhere that matters, like a podcast or a paid course. Instagram compresses video heavily, so your audio was never going to be studio quality to begin with, but 128kbps on top of that will sound noticeably worse than 320kbps, especially through headphones.
Method two: trying to get someone else’s trending sound
This is where people usually mean something different than what they’re asking for. If you’re trying to use a trending song from someone’s Reel in your own content, Instagram already has a button for that, and it’s the “Save audio” option under the audio name on any Reel. That saves the sound to your library inside the app so you can use it on your own Reels.
What it doesn’t do is give you a file. There’s no export, no download link, nothing that leaves the app. That’s not a bug, it’s licensing. Instagram has agreements with music labels that let you use songs inside Reels, but those agreements don’t cover you downloading the song as an MP3 and putting it on a podcast, a website, or a paid product. If you want to know which sounds are safe to use and where the legal lines sit, I’ve covered that in what songs work best for Instagram Stories without copyright issues in 2026 and in how do you add a song to your Instagram Story legally.
This is the part most articles on this topic quietly avoid, because it’s less satisfying than a clean step by step. But it’s the truth: if the audio you want to “turn into a file” is someone else’s music or someone else’s voiceover, running it through a third party extractor site and reusing it outside Instagram is a copyright risk, not a grey area. It doesn’t matter that the tool made it easy. Plenty of creators have had reused audio flagged, demonetised, or taken down on other platforms because the extraction didn’t change who owns the rights.
If it’s your own voice under someone else’s trending track, and you just want your voice out, method one above still applies, you’ll just need to accept the background music might bleed through and plan for that when you pick the sound in the first place. This is one more reason I tell clients to think about their audio choices before filming, not after, and why picking the right sound matters so much when you’re planning content, which I go into in the best trending songs for Instagram engagement Stories and how to find them.
Method three: third party extractor sites (use with caution)
There’s a whole category of free websites where you paste in the Reel link and it spits out an audio file. I’ve tested at least seven of these over the past two years for client work, and the honest pattern is this: they work about half the time, they’re often covered in ads, and a good chunk of them ask you to download an app or extension you don’t need. A few names float around that don’t require an app and just process the link on the page, which is the safer version of this route if you go down it at all.
The steps are roughly the same across all of them:
- Copy the Reel’s link from the share button in Instagram
- Paste it into the extractor site’s input box
- Choose MP3 or WAV as your output format
- Download the file to your device
My preference is still to download the MP4 first and convert it myself in VLC, because I know exactly what’s on my machine and I’m not handing my content link to a random third party server. It’s one extra step compared to the paste-and-go sites, but for anything I’m going to reuse in a paid product or a client’s brand assets, I want control over the file.
What gets used from Reel audio, in my experience
Working with clients on this for a few years now, three uses come up over and over:
- Pulling a testimonial voiceover to reuse as a soundbite on a landing page or in an email
- Turning a short spoken Reel into a podcast intro or outro clip
- Grabbing your own narration from a tutorial Reel to drop into a slower, longer YouTube version of the same content
What almost never works cleanly is grabbing trending music to reuse elsewhere, both because of the licensing problem above and because trending sounds are usually only 15 to 20 seconds of a longer track anyway, so what you’d get isn’t the full song regardless.
A quicker way to avoid this problem entirely
If you already know you’ll want the audio separately, the simplest fix is to just record the voiceover on its own before you ever build the Reel. Record it as a voice memo on your phone, save that file straight away, then build the Reel around it. You end up with a clean audio file from the start and you never have to extract anything from anywhere. It sounds obvious written down, but I still see people build the Reel first and think about repurposing afterwards, and it’s always more work in that order. If you’re planning content with reuse in mind from the start, it’s worth reading how to make Reels on Instagram that get views, not just likes, because a lot of what makes a Reel perform also makes the raw footage more usable later.
This is one of 60 Instagram Reels guides; the full index is Instagram Reels: every guide in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Can I turn any Instagram Reel into an MP3 without downloading extra software?
Yes, browser based converters like CloudConvert let you upload the downloaded MP4 and export an MP3 without installing anything, though you’ll still need to download the Reel as a video first before you can extract the audio from it.
Why does the extracted audio still have background music in it even though I only wanted my voice?
Instagram merges your voiceover and any added music into a single track when you save or export a Reel, so there’s no built in way to split them apart afterwards, which is why using your original unedited footage or a separate voice memo works better if you know in advance you’ll want the voice alone.
Is it legal to extract a trending song from someone’s Reel and reuse it in a podcast or on my website?
No, not usually. Instagram’s music licensing covers use inside Reels and Stories on the platform itself, not exporting the song as a file and reusing it elsewhere, so extracting trending audio for reuse outside Instagram carries a real copyright risk even though the technical step is easy.
What’s the best audio quality setting when converting a Reel to MP3?
Export at 320kbps if the audio will be reused somewhere that matters, like a podcast or a paid course, since Instagram already compresses the video and stacking a low bitrate like 128kbps on top of that will sound noticeably worse.
Further reading
For more fixes like this, open one page of Instagram answers.
