Large-scale music bots on Discord have come under fire from YouTube, and some of the bots, like Groovy, have stopped operations as of September 2021.

I decided to experiment with some of the self-hosted, open-source options for playing music on YouTube due to a general lack of options.

JMusicBot and Aiode were two projects that piqued my interest. If you decide to self-host either of these applications, I will compare them and list some pros and cons.

JMuiscBot

Source: https://jmusicbot.com/

By far, JMusicBot has the simplest setup and the most detailed documentation for setting up a server and running the Java application.

The application is reliable and stable. Even in 24/7 (radio) mode, the playback audio is clear and free of glitches.

The bot’s only limitation is that it does not support playing songs from Spotify.

Aiode

Source: https://github.com/robinfriedli/aiode

Aiode has a long list of features and can do almost anything you would expect a music bot to do.

It can also play songs from Spotify directly.

Aiode’s audio quality is also excellent, and it includes built-in features for cleaning up memory space after a while.

Due to a lack of detailed documentation, the installation process for this application was a little more time-consuming than for JMusicBot. However, with a little more Googling, most issues were resolved.

The bot has a lot of features, which can be confusing for people who just want to play a song.

Overall, I recommend trying both and determining which one best suits your needs. Setting up a bot is a great way to learn and understand the developer tools provided by Discord, YouTube, and Spotify.