Fed up of those quiet periods when nobody else is around and your Discord channel is silent as the grave? Want some Ride of the Valkyries playing while your clan charges in to attack your opponents or something to fill the silence as you wait for your team to gather?
You could play music locally on your computer for your own benefit or you could add a music bot to Discord so you can all enjoy it.
Playing music through a mike is bad form. Nobody wants to hear your tinny music as you hold down the space bar and nobody wants to have to fight your music for airtime in order to communicate with their friends.
A music bot is another way.
Bots are good things in Discord. They are apps that work with the platform to provide features such as music, chat, jokes, quotes or other lighthearted interactions. They are relatively simple tools created in Java, Python or C++ and integrated into Discord. The bot can then perform a given task, from playing music, sending memes or even creating a scoreboard of players within your clan or guild.
Add a music bot in Discord
This guide concentrates on adding a music bot to Discord but the same instructions apply to any type of bot you might want to add. You first need to find a bot you want to use. You then add the bot to the Discord server and configure it for use. The entire process takes around 10 minutes depending on your experience with Discord.
Finding a Discord bot is the easier part of the process. Sites such as Discord Bot List or Carbonitex are two examples of bot repositories.
If you don’t already have a Discord account and running server. Do that next. Sign up at the website, confirm your email, configure your region and server settings, name your server, send out invites to your friends and then we can move on to the bot.
Then:
- Log into your Discord account and check your General Permissions for Manage Server permissions. Check the box next to the entry if it doesn’t already have one.
- Select Add Bot to Server or Invite or whatever it says on the website hosting the music bot you want to use.
- Select a server when you are taken to the authorization screen.
- Select Authorize and your bot will be added to the server you selected.
- Log into the server and test the settings to make sure everything works.
You should now see the bot in the list of names present on the server. Use whatever command the bot uses to play music to fully test. They all seem to differ so check the documentation for your particular bot.
That is all there is to adding a music bot to Discord. As most of the work has been done for you, it is just a matter of linking your server and the music bot in question. The rest is taken care of behind the scenes.
Some good music bots for Discord
There are a bunch of good quality music bots for Discord. All have been created by the community. Some are better than others but all will get the job done. Here are three you might like to try.
Marv
Marv is a very neat Discord music bot that can play music hosted on almost any website, including YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud and some others. The bot works incredibly well and I have used it on a couple of servers I use. The quality is excellent and the playback is of a very high quality.
Rhythm
Rhythm is another good music bot for Discord. Reviews are very mixed on development and the developers themselves but the actual bot is pretty good. Playback is of a good quality, it is stable and reliable and works well. As a free bot, there is little to complain about here.
Fredboat
Fredboat is another highly rated music bot that plays good quality music across your chat server. It is reliable, offers decent sound quality and works well. It isn’t quite as easy to use initially as Marv but once you figure out how to get it working, will provide the soundtrack to your gaming without issue.
On a typical game server, there will be long periods of silence as players prepare for raids or concentrate on tasks. That’s when a music bot comes into its own. It provides a useful alternative to all players listening to their own music and keeps the server alive while you’re doing your thing.
