'They stay on Discord because they find belonging. 'People come to Discord for a specific interest,' she said. That sentiment was echoed by Discord Chief Marketing Officer Tesa Aragones, who joined the company a month before Layton. 'We like to think of all of these other platforms as moment-in-time experiences,' he said.'We're home base where everyone comes to talk about those experiences before, during and after everything.' Many of them already use numerous other tools, and Layton said that the company was not trying to replace other platforms. He estimated that 70% of this work happens due to inbound requests from labels and artists themselves.Īmong artists, interest in Discord increased significantly during the pandemic. 'Most of our job is just getting artists onboarded and helping them build up their servers,' Layton said. In addition to such splashy events, much of the team's day-to-day work is more hands-on. Discord was involved in the production of a MC Jin and Wyclef Jean music video against anti-Asian hate that is scheduled to debut this week German dance DJ Zedd launched a remix contest for one of his songs on Discord in late 2020 Lil Yachty released a special Discord sound pack as part of the company's April Fool's promotions last month. This has resulted in a few high-profile partnerships.

'We are talking to every single major label, management company, agency,' Layton said. Thanks in part to his extensive entertainment industry background - Layton previously worked 13 years for the two big talent agencies, CAA and WME - the team's work has since expanded to also include actors and musicians. 'I hadn't been excited about like this for a long time.'īefore Layton joined, Discord's talent partnership team primarily focused on working with gaming influencers. 'I saw the amazing ways that artists were starting to use the platform during the pandemic,' he said. Layton joined Discord in October from VidCon, where he was looking to Discord as a way to reinvent fandom after COVID-19 shut down live events.

'It's really, really cool what he's put out along with his fans.' 'He has one of the most engaged servers that we've seen,' said Discord's head of talent partnerships, Kenny Layton. He frequently drops by to launch beat battles, encouraging aspiring producers to hone their skills and produce music in a set amount of time, which he then rates on Twitch. Blume's server includes live chat rooms about subjects like music theory, fitness and food. Kenny Beats, whose producer credits include work for DaBaby, Gucci Mane and Ed Sheeran. Electronic musicians were at the forefront of embracing Discord as a service to talk to their audience the hip-hop scene followed soon after.Īmong the early adopters is Kenneth Blume, a.k.a. Music was part of that mix early on, and there are countless servers dedicated to individual bands, labels and musical genres. Since then, Discord has grown beyond games, with 150 million users flocking to the service's 19 million active communities every month to talk about anything and everything. 'We felt there really wasn't any great way for people to talk and hang out before, during and after playing games,' Citron said. That's not an accident: The company's logo is a gamepad, and CEO Jason Citron told a group of journalists this week that video games were very much top-of-mind when he co-founded the company six years ago. Most people who don't use Discord still think of it as a chat service for gamers.

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