YouTube forces popular Groovy Discord music bot offline

Google-owned YouTube begins cracking down on Discord music bots. The search giant has sent a cease and desist to owners of the popular Groovy Bot, which allows Discord users to play music from YouTube videos and is installed on more than 16 million Discord servers. Google wants the service to be gone within seven days, and Groovy complies by shutting down its bot on August 30.

“Groovy has been a big part of my life for the past five years. It all started because my friend’s bot sucked and I thought I could make a better one, ”says Nik Ammerlaan, owner of Groovy Bot, in a post announcing the shutdown. The Groovy Bot sources music from YouTube and allows Discord users to play and share it on the servers where the bot is installed.

Groovy Bot enables an evening of social listening on Discord, largely using audio from YouTube videos. It has become extremely popular over the past five years, with some estimates suggesting that it has over 250 million users. It has now caught the attention of Google and YouTube.

“I don’t know why they decided to send it [a cease and desist] now, ”says Ammerlaan in an interview with The edge. “They probably didn’t know that, to be honest.” Ammerlaan admits that Groovy Bot has been a “huge burden” on his shoulders for the past five years, and that Google’s actions have always been something he saw coming. “It was just a matter of seeing when that would happen,” says Ammerlaan.

While Groovy Bot supports Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud and other services, “about 98% of the songs played on Groovy were from YouTube,” admits Ammerlaan. Google’s decision to force Groovy Bot offline could mean that we will now see similar action against other Discord bot owners.

Rhythm, the most popular Discord music bot, is still going strong … for now. “We do not currently plan to close,” wrote Jet, a co-owner of the Rythm robot, in a message to his user community. Rythm is installed on nearly 20 million Discord servers and indicates that it has more than 560 million users.

We tried to contact one of the owners of Rythm, but after responding at first, the owner did not respond to inquiries about whether Google had issued a cease and desist. If Google isn’t happy with Groovy Bot, it’s hard to imagine that it will let Rythm continue as well.

The Groovy Bot shutdown comes just weeks after several YouTube video download sites went down randomly. Removing this bot also leaves a giant hole in Discord’s bot offerings. “We take the rights of others seriously and ask developers who create bots for Discord to do the same,” a spokesperson for Discord said in a statement. The edge. “If a bot running on Discord violates someone else’s rights, that third party or Discord can take action.”

We reached out to Google to comment on the cease and desist order against Groovy Bot, but the company did not respond in time for the post.