Lorene Melone
How To Share Music on Discord in 2025
Sharing music on Discord kinda feels like the secret sauce to making voice channels more fun — you can jam out together during gaming nights or chill sessions. Honestly, there’s a couple of ways to do it, but the most popular involves music bots or just screen sharing, if you’re into that. Here’s what worked on some setups — might save a few headaches if you mess around with the right steps.
Before jumping in, make sure you’ve got a Discord account and permission to add bots or create channels on the server. Also, it helps to be familiar with some of the common music bots like Hydra or FredBoat.
Method 1: Adding a Music Bot
This is basically the core way if you want seamless music playback. Why it helps? Because bots like Hydra or FredBoat connect directly to your server’s voice channels and play tunes without much hassle. This only works if you have admin rights or proper permissions to add bots (yeah, permissions matter).
When do you know it’s time? Usually when everyone wants background music without the awkward screen recording or just playing music in another app. Expect the bot to join the voice channel and start playing once set up. Sometimes the first attempt is a little buggy — maybe permissions are off or it doesn’t join the voice channel right away. Just re-invite or re-join, and it usually sorts itself out.
Here’s the actual how-to:
- Head over to the bot’s site, e.g., Hydra.
- Click on Invite or Add to Server.
- Pick the server where you wanna jam out, then authorize it after adjusting the needed permissions.
- Make sure the bot has Connect and Speak permissions on the target voice channel. That’s usually under Server Settings > Roles > @everyone or the specific bot role if you made one.
Pro tip: if the bot doesn’t appear to do anything, check permissions in Server Settings > Roles > Voice Permissions and confirm it’s got access to your voice channel.
Method 2: Screen Sharing + Music
This is kinda a workaround, but it works if you can’t or don’t want to mess with bots. Stream your desktop or tab that’s playing music (say, Spotify or YouTube). On some setups, this can be flaky, especially with audio looping or lag, but it’s better than nothing if permissions are locked down.
Start playing your music in your favorite app, then share your screen (Screen Share button in Discord). Select the window or tab, hit share, and hope the audio streams nicely. This is better if you’re just hanging out with friends in a voice chat — no bot setup required, just some patience with audio quality and syncing.
Control your music without confusing chat
Once things are rolling, keep the command chatter in a dedicated text channel or use slash commands if your bot supports them. It keeps the main voice chat less cluttered. Also, some bots support integrations or rich commands, which makes controlling playback smoother and less spammy in chat.
Extra tips & common hiccups
Some lessons from experience:
- Permissions are kinda the ultimate reason things don’t work. Double-check the bot has access to Connect and Speak in your voice channels, and that your server roles permit it.
- If a bot isn’t responding, try kicking it out and reinviting or reloading the permissions. Sometimes quick reboots of Discord (or your PC) help, but not always.
- Keep an eye on rate limits or command syntax differences if you switch bots. They all have their quirks.
- Not sure why it works sometimes and not others? On one machine, wired connection, no problem. On another? Signal might be weaker, or permissions got reset without notice. Can be weird.
Summary
- Pick a good music bot with decent reviews.
- Invite it properly with correct permissions.
- Create a dedicated voice channel for music.
- Join the channel, then command or let the bot auto-play.
- Use a separate text channel or slash commands to keep chat clean.
- Check permissions if things go sideways.
Hopefully, this shaves off a few hours for someone. Setting all this up isn’t always straightforward, but once it’s done, the vibes are pretty good. Good luck and happy jamming!