Discord to partner with YouTube to bring videos to the app

Discord has been constantly growing as a go-to platform for group text, voice, and video communication, with that growth only being accelerated by the pandemic. Now, it looks like Discord users will be able to enjoy a brand new feature soon, as it’s being reported that Discord is partnering with YouTube to bring new video integration to the platform.

Reports of Discord and YouTube collaborating were first made by The Verge. The new video integration is currently in a testing phase, and has started to roll out to a handful of servers. The new feature allows a way for members of a server to watch YouTube videos together in a way that doesn’t infringe on copyright laws. In a screenshot shared by The Verge, we see a similar UI to when users stream content to a Discord call. On the left-hand side of the screen, there’s a queue of videos that members can add to and rearrange. It also displays the profile picture of what user added each video.

It’s hard not to notice the timing of this new partnership between Discord and YouTube. Over the past month, both Groovy and Rhythm, two of the most popular music bots on Discord, were forced to shut down as a result of cease and desist orders that were issued by Google. The two bots allowed users to play music from the internet, often pulling content from YouTube. This circumvented the ad revenue that YouTube and its creators make from views. It’s likely that YouTube’s integration into Discord will include ads either before or during videos.

The partnership between Discord and YouTube to bring new video integration to servers is rolling out now. However, neither company has shared any details, including when users can expect to see the feature made available for all servers.