YouTube Shuts Down Discord Music Bot, Rythm

YouTube has sent a cease and desist notice to Rythm, a popular music bot for Discord, and it plans to shut down on Wednesday.

The bot pulled massive numbers. According to The Verge, Rythm is installed on more than 20 million Discord servers, which is 20% of the platform's monthly active user base.

Rythm allowed users to directly listen to music or any kind of audio from YouTube. However, doing so runs afoul of Google's and YouTube’s terms of service. In late August, Google started its Discord music bot crackdown by sending a similar notice to Groovy Bot.

In that particular case, a YouTube spokesperson stated that Groovy violated the site’s Terms of Service by modifying and "…using it for commercial purposes." Something similar seems to be at play with Rythm.

The Rythm development team posted a notice on its website announcing the bot's shutdown and thanking its users for the five-year run. Despite this turn of events, the developers state they’re going to continue working on some new project and for users to look forward to future updates.

As for Discord, the team behind it has stayed out of Google’s crosshairs. The platform allows users to integrate bots of all kinds into it seamlessly, but avoids supporting them in any sort of official capacity to avoid problems with larger companies.

There are other smaller Discord music bots out there that have avoided attention. Google has yet to send any cease and desist notices or even mention the smaller bots, but it could only be a matter of time before it comes after them, too.