The developer of Discord bot Rythm has received a cease-and-desist letter from Google. He complies with the requirement and closes the service. Previously, the same thing happened with Discord bot Groovy. These bots make it possible to play YouTube audio without ads.
In an explanation to The Verge, developer Yoav writes that YouTube demanded that the bot be shut down within seven days. He indicates that this scenario has already been taken into account. That’s why he’s been working with others for a year on something new, which has now been accelerated by the recent shutdown of the Groovy bot. The developer won’t say much about this new project just yet, but it’s something new with music and there’s some sort of connection to Discord.
Rythm is currently installed on over 20 million Discord servers and specifically this bot has over 560 million users. The closing of Rythm from Wednesday will therefore affect a significant group of users. The popularity of the bot can also be deduced from the required hardware. Sixteen servers with more than 4TB of RAM and more than 1000 CPU cores were already needed to make Rythm work. For Yoav, the bot was a full-time job.
The developer states that all music bots will receive cease-and-desist letters in the coming weeks and he believes they will all stop as well. He argues that this is the end of an era, because in his eyes the music bots were an important part of the experience on Discord. Bots like Rhythm and Groovy allow users to listen to music together in a common channel across a variety of services, including YouTube. Several other YouTube download services have also disappeared in recent weeks.