Discord music is back after Google shut down its music bots weeks ago.
In April, YouTube began shutting down Discord music bots. The owners of the popular Groovy Bot received a cease and desist letter from the search engine giant. Groovy Bot allows Discord users to play music from YouTube videos. Groovy complied by shutting down its bot last month.
This month, YouTube turned its attention to Rhythm. It’s Discord’s most popular music bot. Google sent a cease and design letter to Rhythm owners.
Just like Groovy, Rhythm with over 560 million users, is a bot that enables Discord users to play music from YouTube videos. It’s complying by shutting down its bot at the end of this month.
Discord and YouTube Integration
Recently, however, YouTube started to test Discord integration. The integration started to appear in some Discord servers. This is said to be a test of a collaboration between the two companies.
Watch Together
The collaboration is called Watch Together. This feature enables Discord members to watch YouTube videos together. A similar feature was tested 10 months ago but it disappeared.
And it resurfaced today.
This feature is similar to a person broadcasting a screen in Discord. To launch it, you need to press the button that appears along with the options to share the video and screen.
With Watch Together, Discord server members can create a YouTube video playlist by simply copying and pasting YouTube links.
However, it’s not similar to Rhythm and Groovy Discord music bots that have been shut down. This new feature lets you listen to music through YouTube but in Discord.
But because it’s a YouTube integration, you can see or hear ads.
The integration will only work for now on some servers. However, it will be surely rolled out to small servers before it will be available widely in the coming weeks.
The feature however has some missing elements that made the defunct bots so popular. As mentioned earlier, you may see ads while watching YouTube videos. The ads will surely kill the vibe in a significant way.
Discord is an incredible tool but it may not last forever. When Google killed popular Discord bots, people mourned, especially when it shut down Groovy.
It was a bot with no ads. It takes a search term for a song. You can join the channel you are in and start playing music instantly. The entire process is simple. The bot just pops in the voice channel to play music. For many users, Groovy was there to brighten their mood.
However, Google didn’t like how the bot’s creators used YouTube. The company accused the creators of modifying the service and utilizing it for commercial purposes.
As mentioned, the best thing about the bot is that it had no ads. If the music you’re looking for is on Spotify or Soundcloud, then you can be sure that it’s on Groovy, too. The only difference is that you don’t have to deal with ads.
The Discord won’t be the same again. The integration may or may not offer a better experience to Discord users.
