Discord’s new Clubhouse-style feature, Stage Channels, is now available

Discord is the latest company to introduce a Clubhouse-like feature that allows users to easily stream live audio conversations to a virtual listeners room. Discord says its take, called Stage Channels, is now available on all platforms where Discord is available, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web.

If you’ve used Discord before, you might know that the app already offers voice channels, which usually allow everyone to talk freely. A Stage Channel, on the other hand, is designed to only allow certain people to speak to a group of listeners at a time, which could make them useful for more structured events like community town halls or AMAs. However, only Community Servers, which have more powerful community management tools than a server you might share with a few of your friends, can create the new scene channels.

The wide availability of this feature makes Discord the first app to offer an easy way to host or listen to social audio rooms on most platforms. Clubhouse is still only available on iOS, although an Android version is in development. Twitter’s Spaces feature works on iOS and Android, but only certain users have the ability to create audio rooms at this time. (The company plans to allow anyone to host a space starting in April.) LinkedIn, Mark Cuban, Slack, and Spotify are also working on live audio features, and Facebook is said to have one in the works as well.

At the top of this post, you can see what a Discord Stage channel looks like on the desktop, and this is what a channel looks like on mobile:

Image: Discord

I was able to participate in a Stage Channel to be notified of the functionality, and it was quite similar to using Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. When I joined the Stage Channel, I was automatically muted and listed as an audience member. I could see who was speaking and who else was with me in the virtual crowd.

When I wanted to ask questions, I hit a button to ask to speak, and a stage moderator brought me “on stage” so I could speak. Stage moderators can also mute speakers or even remove them from the room if they are disruptive.