After information broke two weeks in the past that Google-owned YouTube had pressured Groovy bot offline, it was extensively thought-about to be solely a matter of time earlier than the platform got here for the opposite fashionable Discord bots that use it to supply music. Now, it seems that Rythm’s quantity come up: YouTube has reportedly served the bot a cease-and-desist letter, which compelled it to go offline inside seven days.

Discord music bots, which efficiently prevented authorized scrutiny for years, have lengthy offered the platform’s customers with a way to foster neighborhood by making a shared playlists. Rythm is essentially the most widely-used Discord music bot by an extended shot, with an estimated 560 million Discord customers, about 30 million of them are lively every month. Prior to the shutdown, Rythm customers had been in a position to feed the bot YouTube hyperlinks, which might then populate a shared playlist for everyone in a given voice channel to take pleasure in. The firm wrote in a post on its web site that it plans to adjust to the authorized discover by shuttering its service on Sept. 15.

“Even though our current service is shutting down, we’re not going anywhere,” Rythm wrote within the bulletin. “We’ve spent the last year working on something brand new in the music space that will revolutionize how we all listen to music. We can’t share much yet, but keep Rythm in your servers and subscribe to our newsletter to get updates as we release them over the next few months.”

Those manning the bot, which had sourced and performed music from YouTube so as to present ambient background listening for Discord customers, had reportedly been bracing for a sudden pressured closure for months, notably after noting that the authorized groups over at YouTube—and the RIAA—had immediately change into very concerned with third-party ventures that violate the platform’s phrases of service.

“One way or another we knew this was due to happen eventually,” Yoav, the creator of Rythm bot, instructed The Verge in a press release by way of Discord. “Which is why we started working on something new a year ago. Groovy receiving one [legal notice] just meant it would happen sooner rather than later.”

In addition to taking authorized motion in opposition to the favored Groovy bot, YouTube had pressured the shutdown of plenty of fashionable video obtain websites within the final yr, together with YouTube-DL. The sudden litigious streak is a stable indication that the platform—and the RIAA—are more and more concerned with cracking down on third-party websites that violate YouTube’s copyrighted content material.

“I believe that now that we received the letter, all music bots will be getting them too in the following weeks and I strongly believe all of them will shut down,” Yoav instructed The Verge. “As someone that was a very early user on Discord it’s hard to envision Discord without music bots, they’ve become key to the experience and bring so much fun and engagement to a community. It’s a sad end of an era here for everyone on the platform.”