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Music

Armory Bot plays music where people have said yes to hearing it — and nowhere else. There's no DJ role and no surprise audio: the bot plays in the Music Channel your Admin picked, or in another voice channel only after the people in it vote to invite it.

Members Come to the Music — It Never Comes to Them

Consent is spatial — you opt in by being in the room:

  • An Admin designates one Music Channel per server, on the Dashboard's Voice page. That channel carries standing consent: the bot can always play there.
  • Joining the Music Channel is how you opt in to hearing music; leaving it is how you opt out. Nobody is ever moved.
  • Want music in a different voice channel? /play from inside it starts a consent vote in that channel's chat, open for 60 seconds. Only the people in that channel can vote, you count as a yes, and Admins and Moderators get no shortcut: they vote like anyone else.
    • Nobody objects: it passes. Silence never blocks a room that's otherwise on board.
    • Up to 4 people in the channel: a single NO blocks it. It's their room.
    • 5 or more, and someone objects: enough of the votes cast must be yes (80% in a room of 5 to 8, 70% for 9 to 14, 60% for 15 or more), with a minimum number of yes votes (3, 4 and 5). One NO no longer decides it.
    • If it fails, that channel can't start another vote for 5 minutes.
    • If it passes, the bot may play in that channel until it empties of humans, and people who join later are covered too. When the channel empties the permission ends, so the next group votes again.
  • Anyone currently in the channel where music is playing can control playback. Admins and Moderators can control it from anywhere, but the audio still only plays where consent exists.
  • Want to sit in the Music Channel without hearing music? Right-click the bot and choose Mute — Discord's own per-listener mute, and it sticks until you undo it. The bot can't set this for you (Discord doesn't allow it); /music mute just explains the steps.

Setup

  1. Open /dashboard → Voice.
  2. Pick a Music Channel from the picker (disabled until your server is entitled).
  3. Save. That channel is now the only place the bot will play music.

There is no separate /music-config slash command — the Music Channel is configured on the web, same as other voice settings.

/play

Command Description
/play <query> Play a song now, or queue it if something's already playing. Accepts a search phrase, a YouTube video or playlist URL, a Spotify track or album link, or a Deezer link.

/play requires you to be in the Music Channel, unless you're an Admin or Moderator. If no Music Channel is configured yet, the bot tells you to ask an Admin to pick one on the Dashboard.

/music Commands

Command Description
/music skip Skip the current track
/music pause Pause playback
/music resume Resume playback
/music stop Stop playback, clear the queue, and leave the channel
/music queue Show the current queue (now playing + up to 15 upcoming tracks)
/music nowplaying Show the track currently playing
/music volume <0-100> Set playback volume. Leave this at 100 for the best quality — anything lower makes the server re-encode the audio instead of passing it through untouched. To make the bot quieter for yourself only, right-click the bot in the voice channel and use Discord's own user volume slider, which costs nothing.
/music width <0-100> Stereo width. 100 leaves the audio untouched; lower folds wide-panned parts toward the centre. Lower it if harmonies, or one side of a double-tracked guitar, seem to go missing. The change is subtle until you get low — at 40 the far side is still about 7 dB down.
/music shuffle Shuffle the queue
/music seek <position> Jump to a point in the current track. Accepts 1:30, 1:02:03, or a number of seconds (90). Refused for livestreams and for a position past the end of the track.
/music loop <mode> Choose off (tracks play through once), track (repeat the current track) or queue (repeat the whole queue)
/music remove <position> Remove a queued track by its position (as shown in /music queue)
/music mute Ephemeral how-to for Discord's native per-listener mute — the bot cannot mute itself for you

Every /music control command follows the same rule as /play: you must be in the Music Channel, unless you're an Admin or Moderator.

Sources

  • YouTube — search by name, or paste a video or playlist URL.
  • Spotify — paste a track or album link. Spotify is catalog-only: Armory Bot matches the track and plays the equivalent audio from YouTube. No Spotify audio streaming or playback licensing exists for third-party bots, so this is the only way a Spotify link can play anywhere.
  • Spotify playlists can't be read. Spotify does not grant this bot access to the playlist endpoints — it isn't a temporary fault and retrying won't help. Paste a Spotify album link, or use a Deezer or YouTube playlist instead.
  • Deezer — paste a track, album or playlist link. Catalog-only in exactly the same way as Spotify.
  • Livestreams are refused. A live YouTube URL won't queue — it never ends, so it can't be a queue item.
  • Queueing a playlist link only imports up to a capped number of tracks (currently the first 50); huge playlists are trimmed instead of rejected outright.
  • The queue itself has a capacity; once full, /play reports the queue is full and adds nothing.

Auto-Leave

The bot leaves the Music Channel on its own so it never squats there:

  • Empty channel — if every human leaves the Music Channel, the bot disconnects after a short grace period (a few seconds).
  • Silence — if nothing is queued and nothing is playing for a few minutes, the bot disconnects.

Restarts Clear the Queue

The queue lives in memory only — nothing about it is saved to disk. If the bot restarts (deploys, crashes, maintenance), the queue is gone and playback stops by design. Nothing else about your server is affected; just re-queue after a restart.

Troubleshooting

/play says music isn't set up

An Admin hasn't picked a Music Channel yet. Open /dashboard → Voice and set one.

/play or /music commands say to join the Music Channel

You're not currently in the configured Music Channel. Join it to control playback, or ask an Admin/Moderator if you need control from elsewhere.

Commands say Music is a Premium Feature

Your server isn't currently entitled. Apply an active Subscription to the server at the Dashboard.

Parts of the song are missing — a guitar, the harmonies

Some masters put a lot of the music in the stereo sides rather than the centre, and anything that sums the two channels together loses exactly that content. Centred parts (lead vocal, kick, solo) survive; wide-panned parts (one of two double-tracked guitars, vocal harmonies) do not.

Try /music width 25, then 10. Lower values fold the sides toward the centre so those parts come back. Don't stop at 40 or 60 — those still leave the far side 7–12 dB down, quiet enough to sound absent. 100 leaves the audio completely untouched.

The starting width is a bot-wide setting (MUSIC_STEREO_WIDTH, controlled by whoever runs the bot). /music width only changes it until the bot next leaves the channel.

I asked for a song and got a live recording

Searching prefers the studio/album version and pushes live recordings, covers, karaoke and clean edits down the list. If a live version is what you're after, say so in the search — /play unforgiven metallica live — and you'll get one. A song that only ever existed as a live recording still plays normally.

Try a more specific search phrase, or paste the direct YouTube/Spotify URL instead of a name.

The bot left the channel on its own

Expected behavior — either the channel emptied out or playback sat silent for a few minutes. /play again to bring it back.