Why so many music producers are starting their own Discord communities

“Discord really is the future of our music community” – Joe Kay

“If you make beats and you’re not on discord what are you even doing” – Kiefer

“all the new stuff is heard 1st on the streams and in the discord. just another place to be able to give and share videos/music with you all without getting blocked by ig/twitter or anything else bc for some reason they only allow fully exposed asscheeks and videos of people losing their lives but block my Mariah Carey remix? strange.” – Knxwledge

The above quotes are just a handful of testimonials speaking to the power of a new community-building movement gaining ground among a growing number of hip-hop and electronic producers.

In the past week alone, Monte Booker, Sango and Soulection have all launched new Discord servers for cultivating community among their fans. The servers all share a similar, somewhat chaotic structure, comprising dozens of different text, audio and video channels where people can chat about everything from music production to the latest NBA game to their favorite recipes.

The fans aren’t the only ones driving the conversation. Each of these servers also features a conglomeration of producers within similar creative and social circles who engage with said fans regularly, in many cases on a near-daily basis. For instance, Monte Booker’s channel counts fellow artists and producers Medasin, Ravyn Levae, Kaytranada, ROMderful, daedaePIVOT, Jarreau Vandal, Kaelin Ellis, 9th Sage and many others as members. For diehard fans, this kind of collective presence, and the magical creative powers that it can wield, is a dream-come-true to witness firsthand.

To be clear, this phenomenon isn’t totally new. Because Discord has integrations with Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon, many producers who are already active on those channels treat Discord as one of the primary hubs for their fan communities. For instance, the likes of Kenny Beats, Kiefer, Knxwledge, Disclosure, Yung Skrrt and Jauz stream regularly on Twitch, and their Discord servers operate as places for fans to get notified about upcoming livestreams as well as continue chatting with each other in between live sessions.

The popular lo-fi hip-hop YouTube channels ChilledCow and Chillhop have over 70,000 and 14,000 members in their Discord servers, respectively, and give special Discord roles to their paid YouTube members. Beyond official servers, there’s a vast range of fan-run Discords built around subreddits for artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Drake and A$AP Rocky; these next-gen fan community accounts collectively attract tens of thousands of members.

Of all possible community platforms out there, why Discord?

We’ll get into specific reasons below — but first, a summary: Discord is a text, video and audio chat platform with an interface similar to Slack (Slack has workspaces, Discord has servers), with specific features that cater to the former’s origins in the gaming community (e.g. deeper moderation tools, free voice- and video-chat functionality, ability to assign user roles with custom privileges).

In recent years, Discord has expanded far beyond its gaming roots, becoming the community-building tool of choice for many social-media influencers and content creators. The chat service’s real-time communication capabilities offer a much sought-after respite from the unpredictability of social-media algorithms and from an overreliance on one’s follower graph to be heard.

According to the company itself, Discord now has more than 100 million monthly active users across 13.5 million monthly active servers (more than half of these servers are active on a daily basis). Amidst heightened usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, the service recently raised $100 million in funding at a $3.5 billion valuation, hoping to transcend further beyond its gaming-centric reputation into a more generalist community tool. In this vein, there’s a stark parallel between the evolution of Discord and that of Twitch, the gaming-centric livestreaming platform that is also making aggressive investments into non-gaming realms, including music.

There are five main reasons why I think Discord is rising to the occasion for artists looking to cultivate the next generation of fan communities, where other social platforms fall short.

1. Integrations where artists are already active

As I mentioned above, Discord has integrations with several media and membership platforms where artists are already active, including Twitch, Patreon and YouTube.

Hence, it’s possible for an artist to amalgamate their Twitch subscribers, Patreon members, YouTube channel members and non-paying fans all in one place in an automated fashion. Artists can also create dedicated channels and user privileges that are reserved only to certain groups or tiers of subscribers. This structure can contribute to a smoother workflow in terms of keeping in touch with fans across multiple platforms through a centralized hub, to counter the increasing levels of fragmentation in media and communication.

Under this model, mostly-free video platforms like Twitch and YouTube become top-of-funnel entry points for new fans into an artist’s deeper community experience. An example of a potential fan journey: A fan watches an artist’s Twitch video for free, decides to support the artist directly via a recurring subscription to get exclusive benefits on Twitch, then discovers they also have access to an always-on Discord community with like-minded fans from around the world, which also opens up their eyes to the wide range of the artist’s activities beyond Twitch.

2. Synchronous and asynchronous communication in one place

The fact that Discord supports text, audio and video chat means that it can support both live/synchronous and asynchronous communication simultaneously on the same platform. If you’re in the Water & Music Discord server, you’re already familiar with how this works: We host weekly audio hangouts, but also allow the ability for members to continue carrying on these conversations before and after the hangouts go live.

Most social platforms out there are only really good at one or the other. Apps like Twitch and Clubhouse are focused on live/synchronous interaction, and have almost no native asynchronous communication tools. In contrast, email newsletters and SMS marketing apps like Community focus solely on asynchronous communication.

Big-tech social companies like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter do allow for both synchronous and asynchronous interactions on their respective platforms. But because they’re targeting mass-market audiences that can bring in advertising revenue, it’s hard for community organizers to find a sense of cohesion and focus amidst crowded, pay-for-play newsfeeds.

Discord is not the solution, but it’s one solution that is becoming increasingly popular due to its ability to address these issues of handling multiple forms of communication seamlessly — while, as discussed above, integrating with platforms where artists are already active.

3. Horizontal and vertical communication in one place

In my post on Patreon’s blog, I addressed the distinction that researchers often make between horizontal and vertical community interaction. Vertical interactions refer to more hierarchical and top-down communication from an organization or brand to its audience, while horizontal interactions involve more decentralized, informal communication among members who treat each other as peers.

Artists and marketers tend to treat communication on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram as mostly vertical, not horizontal. A common perception is that social media for artists should be about image management and news updates, rather than about bi-directional conversation per se (this is especially the case for artists who care about maximizing control over their brand and reputation).

This is also largely a byproduct of the business models of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where you’ll reach only a small minority of your audience if you don’t pay up for ads. Hence artist voices on these platforms tend to feel more like megaphone broadcasts than like conversations; in the process, the fan-to-fan relationship goes largely ignored.

But for artists who take community-building with their fans seriously, they need to think about the horizontal angle too — i.e. about what fans will get from each other as much as what they will get from the artist brand in a top-down manner.

It’s worth a reminder here that the history of the Internet and networked computing is inseparable from the history of music fans around the world trying to find digital gathering spaces to talk with each other horizontally. The first terminal on the first-ever public, computer-based bulletin board — Community Memory in 1973 — was located at the now-shuttered record store Leopold’s Records in Berkeley, California. Fan-run music forums flourished on the World Wide Web in the 1990s and early 2000s alongside the rise of the MP3, which made it easier for fans to send each other music and exchange their thoughts and reactions. Some forums like the Hollerboard helped launch the careers of many of today’s superstar artists and DJs.

While these forums have largely faded from view in the wake of massive social platforms like Facebook and Twitter (vertical), a wider, countervailing force is now underway in the form of groups seeking out more focused, private and organic arenas for communication (horizontal). Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, all kinds of leaders — from small-business CEOs, to educators, to artists and content creators — are taking on the responsibility of fostering virtual communities around their work.

Again, Discord is not the solution, but it’s definitely one solution that incorporates many of the elements that made fan-run music forums so vibrant — notably combining vertical communication between artists and fans, with horizontal communication among fans and among artist-peers. The playing field becomes much more visibly level.

Importantly, running these kinds of servers is difficult for an individual artist to do safely without going crazy or losing several hours of their day. All of the above-mentioned producers’ servers have dedicated moderators to monitor internal conversations and kick out any members who violate their codes of conduct. A community moderator is usually low on the totem pole in terms of roles that artists hire for their teams — but especially in a time of unprecedented levels of virtual communication, this kind of job will likely become more of an imperative, especially in conjunction with the rise of livestreaming and paid-membership experiences.

4. Mutual acknowledgement as humans, not as producers or consumers

In December 2018, music journalist Peter Robinson wrote an op-ed for Music Business Worldwide about how the most interesting artists of the future will embrace, rather than eschew, the concept of having a “Plan B” in their careers:

How odd that having more than one passion is so frequently seen as a weakness, rather than evidence of a potential polymath or an enquiring mind … It’s not as if the ‘no Plan B’ mantra is anything to be celebrated even if an artist does somehow make it. The truth is that having no Plan B means being focused on music and nothing else, which makes for incredibly boring recording artists … The question of ‘what else have you got?’ is becoming even more urgent in the streaming era.

This idea of praising the “Plan B” aligns strongly with the way music producers’ Discord servers are structured today.

When it comes to social-media branding, artists often face pressure to be professionally and visually consistent. This means staying “on topic” — focusing on self-promotion, encouraging fans to stream your music and posting your press interviews, magazine shoots and concert footage, not posting superfluous hobbies or any other updates that drive attention away from you.

In stark contrast, Discord fan communities are basically a free-for-all in terms of the topics covered. Yes, there are some servers that are really built by and for producers; for instance, almost all of the channels in Kiefer’s focus on music, including music theory, music gear recommendations and free loop/sample exchanges.

But many other producers’ Discord servers span topics far beyond music — and are more active because of it. For example, Sango’s server features different channels for sports, plants, photography, recipes and general “positive vibes.” Knxwledge’s server includes channels specifically for gaming, fan art, anime, dogs, films and more, in addition to channels focused just on music production.

The underlying argument with these kinds of setups is that artists and fans are human beings first, producers and consumers second. The best human relationships are not transactional, but rather are built around shared interests and more multilayered perspectives on life. If a producer is interested in cooking certain cuisines or watching certain genres of film, there’s a good chance many of their fans are interested too — so why hold back? This makes less sense in the context of social-media standards for artists, but makes much more sense in the context of a horizontal, organic community on Discord.

Again, Discord is not the solution, but is one solution to make this mutual acknowledgment of humanity a reality. Many other platforms, like Clubhouse and Mighty Networks, can help community organizers accomplish a similar goal.

5. Creating opportunity through internal community, not external validation

One personal hypothesis of mine is that the sudden influx of Discord servers from music producers is tied to a growing sentiment within certain creative communities that it’s more sustainable to create opportunity through strengthening internal networks than by chasing external validation from the industry.

The same week that the likes of Monte Booker and Sango launched their own Discord servers, Kaytranada posted the following on Twitter:

I can already see an informal mentorship and opportunity-creation scheme unfolding within these producers’ Discord servers, whereby they help advise, educate and cultivate the next generation of artists behind them — or at least build the environment for this kind of creative development to happen openly and safely. Lots of these servers have dedicated #cookup channels where budding producers can watch each other make music and chat about their creative processes. At one point in Monte Booker’s server, a bunch of fans were getting together for an audio-only cipher, taking turns rapping over a looping beat that someone was streaming.

These are all signs that Discord can potentially take the place of the music forums of old — where artists and fans can find each other, build community, develop and scout talent and help break their most standout members into the mainstream. In a world of remote work, these kinds of servers and communities can also help build an artist’s credibility and reputation by association, in a way that highlights the underlying work and creative philosophy rather than solely external engagement metrics. As Shopify’s Alex Danco wrote in a recent blog post:

‘I know you from this message board; you’re someone who cares a lot about our craft’ will beat any resume line or work credential. Forums will unbundle LinkedIn, for any job where craft matters.

Danco was writing mostly about software development and tech jobs, but he might as well have been writing about music. Behind this mindset is a concept that feels unconventional, revolutionary even, in this time, yet has been proven over and over again in music-industry history: The foundation of a long-term, sustainable career in music isn’t a hit song that tops the charts. It’s a genuine community that sticks around and, with the artist’s blessing, takes on a life of its own.