News

Instagram Music Is Finally Available In The Middle East

Published

5 years ago

March 9, 2021

instagram music is finally available in the middle east

In 2018, Instagram launched an exciting new feature called Instagram Music. The feature gives users the ability to add music to photos and videos in their Instagram stories. Instagram clearly understands that some things are best said with music, so after years of waiting, the company has made Instagram Music available in the Middle East.

The delay was primarily due to music licensing deals. Instagram is legally required to purchase a license for all the music in order for users to use them within Instagram stories. These music licensing deals are geo-restricted, so Instagram can’t offer the feature to countries they have not obtained a license for.

When the feature was first introduced, it was only available in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Australia, and France. So users who were not from these specific countries typically got the famous “Instagram Music isn’t available in your region” message when they scrolled through Instagram stories of people who had this feature.

“For that reason, we’ve been working with creators and music partners around the world to help people connect and share how they feel through music across the Facebook family of apps. We see music as a core part of the future of entertainment on Facebook and Instagram. Now there are even more ways for people to create and discover content they’ll love.” said Facebook in a written statement.

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To enjoy this feature, simply open your Instagram app, swipe right, and create a new story. After that, tap on the sticker icon or swipe up. Once this is done, you’ll find an icon that is titled “Music”. You should then be able to choose any of the available songs to add to your story. You can select a part or segment of a song to use in your story. When displaying song lyrics, you’ll have the freedom to change the style, font, color, and size of the text appearing on screen.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.