Another great project squandered by a large company.

Google has shut down yet another popular project that is outside of its control, which should come as no surprise. Rythm, a Discord music bot that scrapes music directly from YouTube for use in Discord listening parties, is the victim this time. It grew to be the most popular music bot on Discord after five years of trouble-free operation, and it appears to be too huge to exist in Google's eyes.

Google-owned YouTube is now focused on Rythm, Discord's most popular music bot, after taking down the Groovy Discord music bot a few weeks ago. The founders of Rythm, a Discord bot that lets users play music from YouTube videos and has over 560 million users, have received a cease and desist warning from Google.

After 5 years of service and over 20 million users. Rythm will be shutting down on September 15th

This is not the end! We have been working tirelessly on a new project that we can't share yet! If you would like updates on this, check out our site here: https://t.co/iw2K1yWv5T ❤️

— Rythm (@rythmfm) September 12, 2021

Rythm can be found on over 20 million different Discord servers. According to Rythm, Discord has over 560 million members, with 30 million of them using the service on a monthly basis. With 150 million monthly active users, the elimination of a crucial feature used by around 20% of Discord's users is a significant setback.

Google asked that the Rythm bot be disabled within seven days, and on September 15th, the service complied by turning off its bot.

Homemade bots are allowed in Discord community servers as long as they follow Discord's Terms of Service. The Rythm bot allowed users to write in a command or paste a link to play music on the server, and it was highly customizable. Sharing music with pals has been around since the dawn of time, so it's natural to see why this bot became famous.

Other than monopolization of web traffic, there could be a variety of legal reasons for Google to shut it down after so many years. Groovy Bot, another music bot that allows users to share YouTube songs in Discord listening parties, follows a similar premise. Google issued a cease-and-desist order to them at the end of August, and it's not hard to anticipate that most other music bots will follow suit.

While bigger companies continue to seek ownership of popular concepts or ideas that they do not control, one can only speculate on what will be the next fatality. For the time being, it's safe to suppose that you'll have to rely on a smaller, less well-known music bot – at least until Google shuts down that one as well.