How to create a music bot on Discord

Discord is a popular communication platform among gamers, but its features extend beyond just chatting with friends. One of the exciting aspects of Discord is the ability to add bots to your server, enhancing its functionality. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a music bot on Discord using Python. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Set Up a Discord Application
To a music bot, you need to set up a Discord application and get your bot’s token. Start by visiting the Discord Developer Portal and create a new application. Give it a catchy name and customize its appearance, such as setting an avatar image.

Step 2: Add a Bot to Your Application
After creating the application, navigate to the “Bot” section and click on “Add Bot.” This will create a bot user for your application. Note down the bot’s token as it will be required to authenticate your bot in later steps.

Step 3: Invite the Bot to Your Server
To use the bot on your Discord server, you must invite it. Go to the “OAuth2” section in the Developer Portal and scroll down to the “Scopes” section. Tick the “bot” checkbox and copy the generated OAuth2 URL. Open the URL in your browser and choose the server where you want to add the music bot. Confirm the invitation, and the bot will be added to your server.

Step 4: Installing Required Libraries
Now, we need to some Python libraries that will allow our code to interact with the Discord API. Open your preferred Python development environment, and in the terminal, run the following command to install .py and youtube_dl:

pip install discord.py youtube_dl

Step 5: Writing the Code
Create a new Python file and import the required libraries by adding the following lines at the top of your code:

import discord
from discord.ext import commands
import youtube_dl

Next, initialize the bot by creating an instance of the commands.Bot class using your bot’s token:

bot = commands.Bot(command_prefix=’!’)

Define a function that will handle the events when the bot is ready:

@bot.event
async def on_ready():
print(f'{bot.user.name} is ready to play music.’)

Finally, define a command that plays music from YouTube. This command will take in a search query, download the audio from the top search result, and stream it to the voice channel:

@bot.command()
async def play(ctx, query):
voice_channel = ctx.author.voice.channel
voice_client = await voice_channel.()

ydl_opts = {‘format’: ‘bestaudio’}
with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
info = ydl.extract_info(f”ytsearch:{query}”, download=False)
url2 = info[‘entries’][0][‘formats’][0][‘url’]
voice_client.play(discord.FFmpegPCMAudio(url2))

You can add more commands to pause, resume, or stop playback, as well as to provide a queue of songs to be played.

Step 6: Run the Bot
Save the script and run the Python file. The console will display the bot’s status as “ready,” indicating that it is online and ready to play music. You can now test the bot by using the “!play” command followed by a search query. It will join your voice channel and start playing the requested song from YouTube.

Conclusion
Creating a music bot on Discord opens up a whole new level of entertainment for your server members. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can create your very own music bot using Python and discord.py library. Experiment with additional features and commands to enhance your bot’s functionality and provide an excellent music experience for your Discord community. Get creative and have fun exploring the possibilities!