I have been noticing this a lot nowadays. For a while, I thought it could be just my perceptions, but I saw a few Reddit thread mentioning the same. The music on Instagram sounds a lot better than the originals or other platforms like YouTube. It sounds really wide and you can clearly distinguish between various elements of the song.

There is one Instagram handle which posts remixes. When I first heard it, I was amazed by the mixing of the tracks, so I visited their YouTube and I was totally disappointed by what I heard. The same song, but it sounds soul-less/average on YouTube.

I am trying to replicate the stereo field, but I ain't getting anywhere. Anyone else notice this or have any idea about how does it work?

 

Interesting! Don't know.

 

All the streaming plataforms have different encoders and ways to do loudness normalization. Or they made a master just for Instagram, but AFAIK is the first option. I already did this test and all music sounds different on different apps.