Discord music bots
A music bot joins a voice channel and plays a shared queue, so a group can listen together without anyone streaming from their own computer.
How a music bot works
Most of the big public music bots disappeared in 2021. Groovy and Rythm shut down after cease-and-desist letters from YouTube, whose terms do not allow downloading or streaming its audio outside YouTube's own player. Bots that still play YouTube are breaking those terms, and they also break often when YouTube changes how its pages load.
A hosted music bot is on firmer ground with sources that allow it: SoundCloud tracks, internet radio streams, and direct links to audio files you own or have the rights to. Spotify does not give bots any audio. A bot that accepts Spotify links reads the track name and artist from Spotify and then looks for the audio somewhere else.
Under the hood the bot uses a voice library, @discordjs/voice in Node, with FFmpeg and Opus to turn the source into audio Discord can carry. It needs Connect and Speak in the voice channel, and it should leave when the channel empties so it does not sit there all night. Music bots run on slash commands, so no privileged intents are needed. You describe the commands and who can control them, and the bot is built and hosted for you.
What it usually does
- Joins your voice channel and plays a shared queue
- Handles /play, /skip, /pause, /queue and /volume
- Shuffles, loops and removes songs from the queue
- Restricts skip and stop to a DJ role if you want
- Leaves on its own when the voice channel is empty
- Posts the current track in the text channel where playback started
Permissions and intents it needs
Give a bot only what it uses. These are the permissions a typical music bot asks for in its invite link, and why.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| View Channels | Sees the voice channel and the text channel it replies in. |
| Connect | Joins the voice channel. |
| Speak | Plays audio once connected. A channel overwrite can remove this even when the role has it. |
| Send Messages | Posts the now-playing message and queue updates. |
| Embed Links | Shows the queue and current track as embeds. |
Privileged intents
None needed for a typical music bot.
None needed. Voice state updates come through a standard intent, and slash commands do not require Message Content. Only an old-style bot that reads "!play" from chat would need the Message Content intent.
Music bots built here
Real bots made by describing them, running in Discord servers now.
No music bots are listed yet. Bots appear here once they have been online for three days and joined a server. Yours could be the first.
Describe yours like this
Name the channels, roles and commands you want. The more specific the description, the less you need to change afterwards.
I want a music bot for our Lounge voice channel. It should play SoundCloud links and our community radio stream, keep a queue with /play, /skip, /queue and /stop, and only let the @DJ role skip other people's songs. Leave after 3 minutes if nobody is in the channel.
Questions about music bots
Can a Discord music bot play YouTube?
Some still do, but YouTube's terms of service forbid downloading or streaming its content outside its own player. That is why Groovy and Rythm shut down in 2021 after cease-and-desist letters. A bot you run yourself carries the same risk, and YouTube playback breaks often. SoundCloud, radio streams and audio files you have rights to are safer sources.
Why is my music bot in the voice channel but silent?
Check the bot's permissions on that voice channel: it needs Connect and Speak, and a channel overwrite can remove Speak even when the role has it. Also check whether someone server-muted the bot by right-clicking it. If those are fine, the source may have failed to load, which shows up in the bot's logs.
Can a music bot play Spotify songs?
Not from Spotify itself, because Spotify does not let bots stream its audio. Bots that accept Spotify links read the song title and artist, then search another source for a matching track. The result can be a different version or a cover, so ask for a bot that shows what it actually found before it plays.
Should a music bot stay in the voice channel all the time?
Usually not. A bot sitting in an empty channel uses memory and bandwidth for nothing. Most music bots leave after a few minutes alone, and some leave as soon as the queue ends. A 24/7 radio channel is the exception, where staying connected is the whole point and the bot reconnects after a restart.
Other kinds of Discord bots
Describe the music bot your server needs
Write it in a sentence or two. You see the plan before anything is built, and your first bot runs free for 7 days.