YouTube Forces To Stop Discord Feature, Rythm Predicts It Will Happen!

Rythm is a bot that allows Discord users to play music from YouTube videos without opening YouTube. (photo: Rhythm)

JAKARTA - The popular music bot on the Discord chat and streaming application, Rythm was asked to retire early this week. The request came from YouTube, which also recently discontinued the Groovy service.

Google has sent a service termination letter to Rythm owner Yoav. Rythm is a bot that allows Discord users to play music from YouTube videos without opening YouTube.

The Mountain View, California, USA giant wants the Rythm bot to shut down on September 15. Since then, Rythm announced that they would be closing this week and following Google's request.

The Rythm music bot is installed on more than 20 million Discord servers and is currently used by 560 million Discord users. This shutdown will affect millions of users, and it will affect Discord's own core features.

"One way or another we knew this would happen eventually. That's why we started working on something new a year ago", Yoav told The Verge, quoted by VOI, Monday, September 13.

Yoav realized that it would happen. This is why the company started working on a new bot in 2020. They had already predicted they would receive a termination letter after Groovy got it from YouTube a few weeks ago.

But Yoav is not discouraged, he states the Rythm bot team is currently working on something to replace the music bot, and that it will fill the "hole" in the music space. The new project will have a connection to Discord as well, but the company isn't ready to provide more details about it yet.

Rythm has been Yoav's focus for years, and he needed 16 servers, 4TB of RAM, and over 1.000 CPU cores to power the music bot. This just goes to show how popular Rythm has been since its launch.

On the other hand, Yoav believes that now that they have received the termination letter, he believes the other music bots will soon get them too and all of them will be forced to shut down.

He also admits that it would be hard to imagine Discord without music bots as they have become key to the online experience. It has brought so much engagement and fun to the community. For information, earlier this year, Microsoft acquired Discord, and users expect more changes to occur in the future.