D.I.Y.

Why Discord is a great free asset for musicians

Discord can provide community space, networking, and much more – all at no cost. Here’s everything you need to know…

by Randi Zimmerman of Symphonic Blog

Discord is a popular app that lets users form group chats where they can collaborate, share, learn, and just straight up talk, all in one place. Initially taken over by gamers, Discord has grown into a space for anyone, especially artists and musicians, to grow their community in a safe space for fan and colleague interaction. If you aren’t already a fan of Discord, what’re you waiting for? Here’s why it shouldn’t be overlooked…

Here’s the rundown…

Discord is for more than just fan interaction. With it, you can collaborate with underground producers, get advice on how to market your next release with a wide variety of peers in the industry, and so much more. It serves as the ultimate hub for interaction online.

Once you sign up for an account on Discord, you can join different online communities called servers. There are a host of servers on Discord dedicated to music and tons of genres to match for you to explore and join. In addition to joining servers, you can also create your own unique server where you can build a community for your fans, collaborate with other artists and develop meaningful connections. On Discord, you aren’t limited to text messages alone either. You get video/voice calls, media and file sharing, classic text, and more.

As an artist looking to form deeper connections with your fanbase, it’s time to stop sleeping on Discord! — If that’s not enough of a motivator, here are a couple other reasons to get in on the action…

Networking

Discord is am amazing networking space for creatives! Now, just like most social platforms, it can be obnoxious to jump into anyone else’s space and start screaming your name from the rooftop. However, since your server and those you’re a part of are typically invite-only, you can rest assured the people who surround you in those spaces have the same mindsets, making it way easier to share your thoughts and get feedback.

There are servers solely made for music submissions, collaborations, and more. Some bigger artists like T-Pain even use their server to find up-and-coming talent. He ran an entire music competition to sign an artist to his label through his Discord server and Twitch streams. Not a bad idea!

Building Community & Growing Your Fanbase

Many artists use Discord as a ‘Group’ or ‘Forum’ where their fans can share their thoughts on certain topics, events, releases, etc. These spaces also allow you, as the artist, to share various forms of content without restriction with your fanbase.

There are no limits to what you can share with your community. You can make it whatever you want it to be. If you want to only talk about music, you totally can. BUT, you can also make it a safe space where your fans can talk about whatever they want. You can have a server dedicated to producers, one for live performers, etc. It’s completely up to you. That’s the beauty of Discord.

——

As you know, the music industry is more digital than ever. And Discord is all about communication. That being said, Discord is a great place to corral your fans from other platforms to continue an existing conversation there. For example, let’s say you just dropped a funny TikTok. You could ask your fans on Discord what they thought about it, if they thought it was on brand for you, if it sucked, and all sorts of things you originally wouldn’t ask a less connected group about.

That being said, this tight knit group is one to behold! Other people will hear about this cool group of people on Discord and want to be a part of it themselves, thus growing your community across platforms in no time.

Monetize Your Music

Musicians can also use Discord to advertise their merchandise and concert tickets to their fans on the platform. Even more, there’s the option to put your Discord community behind a paywall, meaning your fans have to pay a subscription to access your content. While this won’t be for everyone, it’s a a great option of how you can make money as an artist on Discord.

Ready to get started?

If you’re ready to get into it, we wrote a whole post explaining how to create your own server right here. Once you’ve done that, you can start making it homey by inviting people in and adding various channels for different topics.

There is much more you can do to edit your Discord server. You can edit the channels, designate roles within these channels, create new categories, and more. Once you start playing around with it, you’ll see that the platform is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. As an artist, you can use Discord to connect with your fans, learn new skills, and chat with people from all over the industry. — You never know who you might connect with!

Good luck!

Share on: