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Just weeks after forcing the Groovy Discord music bot offline, Google-owned YouTube is now turning to Rhythm, the most popular music bot on Discord. The search giant has sent a cease and desist to owners of Rythm, a bot that allows Discord users to play music from YouTube videos and is used by more than 560 million people.
Google wants the Rythm bot closed within seven days, and the service is complying with that by shutting down its bot on September 15.
Rythm is currently installed on over 20 million Discord servers alone. Rythm has over 560 million Discord users, which makes this shutdown a huge blow to a core feature of Discord.
“Somehow we knew it had to happen,” Yoav, the creator of Rhythm bot, admits in a Discord message to The edge. “That’s why we started working on something new a year ago. Groovy by receiving one just meant it would happen ASAP.
The Rythm bot team is working on “something new in the musical space that we’re passionate about,” Yoav says. There will be some form of connection to Discord, but the team isn’t ready to talk more about their upcoming project just yet. Rhythm was a full-time job for Yoav, and it took 16 servers with over 4TB of RAM and over 1,000 processor cores to power this Discord music bot, illustrating how popular the service had become.
“I think now that we have received the letter, all the musical robots will also be receiving them in the coming weeks and I firmly believe that they will all stop,” Yoav explains. “As a very old Discord user, it’s hard to imagine Discord without the musical bots, they have become the key to the experience and bring so much fun and engagement to a community. It’s a sad end of the era here for everyone on the platform.
While music bots may seem like an essential part of Discord, they have been activated by third parties for years, allowing Discord to avoid scrutiny or lawsuits from companies like YouTube. The shutdown of Groovy and Rythm will force many Discord users to seek alternatives, but developers of smaller robots could soon find themselves in a similar position if they attempt to fill the giant void.
YouTube and Discord, however, appear to be working on some form of alternative. Discord has been testing a social party feature on its service for 10 months and allows Discord users to form a YouTube watch party. It’s not a direct replacement for music bots on Discord, but if the feature officially launches, it will be an official way to watch YouTube content in Discord.
We reached out to Google and Discord for comment on the Rythm shutdown, but neither company has responded at the time of posting.
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