Why Groovy is gone, and what filled the void
Groovy shut down on August 30, 2021, after Google sent a cease-and-desist over YouTube playback. At the time it sat in more than 16 million Discord servers, second only to Rythm in raw install count. The shutdown took every saved playlist, every queue history, and every premium subscription down with it.
The Groovy alternatives that survived the 2021 takedown wave are the bots that either moved to Spotify and SoundCloud sources, paid for licensed audio paths, or shifted to a self-hosted model. Each of the seven picks below has a recent uptime record, accepts the long queues Groovy users were used to, and works without the legal risk that killed the originals.
If you joined a server after 2021 and never set up Groovy, a music bot lets anyone with permission queue tracks into a voice channel for the room to hear. The picks below cover that workflow at free, paid, and self-hosted price points.
Quick comparison
| Bot | Best for | Free plan | Paid plan | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jockie Music | Multi-bot premium queues | Yes, queue cap | $5.99/month | Six bots for parallel voice channels |
| Lara Music | Generous free tier | Yes | $4.99/month | Free 24/7 mode without ads |
| FredBoat | No-paywall basics | Yes | None | Free forever, no premium gating |
| Beatra | Free filters and lyrics | Yes | $3.99/month | Most generous free feature surface |
| Chip | Cheapest premium tier | Yes | $2.99/month | Lowest paid price on the list |
| Vexera | Music plus light moderation | Yes | $4.99/month | Combined music and welcome bot |
| Tempo | Audio reliability | Yes | $4.99/month | Dedicated Lavalink fleet for low dropouts |
Why people left Groovy (and why the survivors look different)
Groovy did not collapse because users grew tired of it. YouTube sent the cease-and-desist that closed the door, and a similar letter went to Rythm a few weeks later. The bots still operating in 2026 had to redesign around that pressure.
A few patterns repeat in the threads where people compare today’s options:
- Source switching. The survivors stream Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and Deezer instead of YouTube directly. That changes which tracks resolve and which do not.
- Premium gating. Audio filters, queue length, 24/7 mode, and skip votes that Groovy gave away for free are now paid features on most replacements.
- Server-size caps. Free tiers sometimes cut off at a member count threshold, which forces growing communities into the paid plan or a different bot.
- Uptime variance. The bots running their own Lavalink nodes hold up better than the ones renting capacity, especially during European prime time.
The Groovy alternatives
1. Jockie Music, best for replacing Groovy at scale
Jockie Music runs as six bots in one server. Jockie 1 through Jockie 6 can each occupy a different voice channel and play a different queue at the same time, which covers the multi-room music setups Groovy never supported.
Sources include Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, Tidal, and direct file URLs. Playlist imports from those services keep their order and metadata, which is the closest in-server feel to running an actual streaming client.
Where it falls short: Only Jockie 1 is available without Premium, so the multi-bot advantage is paywalled. Free queues are capped and ads play at queue boundaries.
Pricing:
- Free: Jockie 1 only, queue capped, ads at queue start
- Premium: $5.99/month for one server, scaling tiers for more
- vs Groovy: paid, but the most feature-complete bot on Discord
Migrating from Groovy: No direct import (Groovy’s data is gone). The fastest workflow is to rebuild playlists in Spotify or Apple Music and queue them by URL.
Add to server: jockiemusic.com
Bottom line: Pick Jockie if music is a core part of why the server exists and the Premium tier fits the budget.
2. Lara Music, best generous free tier
Lara Music kept the Groovy-era promise of a usable free plan. The free tier includes 24/7 voice connection, full queue access, Spotify and SoundCloud sources, and lyrics, with no ads in the queue.
It runs slash commands, supports playlist saving across server restarts, and has a web dashboard for moderators who do not want to memorise commands.
Where it falls short: The premium tier is mostly cosmetic, so paying users do not unlock much beyond DJ-style filters. Catalogue coverage misses some Apple Music exclusives.
Pricing:
- Free: 24/7 mode, full queues, basic playback, no ads
- Premium: $4.99/month per server, adds filters and priority audio
- vs Groovy: closest to Groovy’s free-feel philosophy
Migrating from Groovy: Add Lara, give it voice permissions, and queue Spotify or SoundCloud links the same way old Groovy commands worked.
Add to server: laramusic.xyz
Bottom line: Pick Lara if a no-credit-card plan is the priority and the server can live without YouTube-only tracks.
3. FredBoat, best free-forever Groovy replacement
FredBoat has been online since 2016 and the team kept it running through the 2021 wave by leaning on Spotify and SoundCloud sources rather than YouTube. The codebase is open source on GitHub, which means it survives even if the hosted instance has an outage.
The feature surface is narrower than Jockie’s. There is no multi-bot mode, no in-server filters, and no recommendation engine. The queue, shuffle, repeat, volume, seek, and lyric commands all work without a paywall.
Where it falls short: Reliability is bot-grade rather than enterprise-grade. Outages happen, especially during European prime time. Mobile lyrics pulls occasionally time out.
Pricing:
- Free: full feature set, no paid tier
- vs Groovy: closest to the original spirit, with the same caveat that something hosted for free can go down
Migrating from Groovy: Drop FredBoat into the server, grant the same voice permissions, and the ;;play <url> style commands work right away.
Add to server: fredboat.com
Bottom line: Pick FredBoat if a credit card is off the table and occasional downtime is acceptable.
4. Beatra, best free feature surface
Beatra ships filters, lyrics, autoplay, and queue management without a paywall. The free tier on most bots locks those behind Premium, so Beatra ends up doing more for a casual server than its competitors.
Audio comes from Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube via a licensed shim. The bot supports slash commands and a web dashboard for moderation roles.
Where it falls short: Server-size caps kick in around 1,000 members on the free tier, after which the Premium plan is the only way to keep stable playback. Catalogue gaps appear on regional labels.
Pricing:
- Free: filters, lyrics, autoplay, basic queues
- Premium: $3.99/month per server, removes member cap and adds audio quality boost
- vs Groovy: more features without paying than Groovy had on Premium
Migrating from Groovy: Add Beatra, link Spotify in the dashboard, and re-add saved playlists by URL.
Add to server: beatra.app
Bottom line: Pick Beatra for small-to-mid servers where the free tier needs to do real work.
5. Chip, best cheap premium tier
Chip is a music-first bot built on a Lavalink fleet scaled since 2019. The premium price is the lowest among paid Groovy alternatives and the free tier is the most generous after FredBoat and Beatra.
It supports Spotify and SoundCloud playlist imports, plays from Apple Music links via the metadata shim, and includes a 16-band EQ and standard filters at the paid tier.
Where it falls short: No multi-bot architecture for parallel voice channels. The web dashboard is functional but older than Jockie’s or Vexera’s.
Pricing:
- Free: queue cap at 100 tracks, no filters, no skip vote
- Premium: $2.99/month per server
- vs Groovy: paid, but at the lowest tier of any decent replacement
Migrating from Groovy: Slash commands /play, /queue, /skip map directly. The default prefix can be changed to match any Groovy-era scripts.
Add to server: chipbot.gg
Bottom line: Pick Chip if Premium is acceptable and the multi-room feature is not needed.
6. Vexera, best for music plus light moderation
Vexera ships music inside a wider bot that also handles welcome messages, moderation, and sound effects in voice. Servers that ran Groovy alongside one or two moderation bots can consolidate the stack.
Audio comes from YouTube via a licensed source, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Twitch. Filters (bass boost, 8D, nightcore, vaporwave) unlock at Premium, which is one of the cheaper paid tiers on the list.
Where it falls short: The all-in-one design means each subsystem is shallower than a dedicated bot. Moderation is fine for small servers but does not replace Carl-bot or Wick.
Pricing:
- Free: queue length cap, no filters, basic playback
- Premium: $4.99/month per server, adds filters, longer queues, priority audio
- vs Groovy: cheaper than Jockie and lighter on features, fair value when music is one of several needs
Migrating from Groovy: Slash commands map cleanly. Server-wide settings need to be set once in the Vexera dashboard.
Add to server: vexera.io
Bottom line: Pick Vexera for small-to-mid servers that want music plus a light utility layer without juggling three bots.
7. Tempo, best uptime and audio quality
Tempo has a smaller user base than the names above but earned a strong reputation on uptime. The team operates dedicated Lavalink nodes in multiple regions, which keeps the audio path short and the dropouts rare.
Sources are Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, and direct URLs. The bot does not pull from YouTube directly, which is partly why it survived the 2021 wave intact and why takedown risk is low.
Where it falls short: Smaller community, fewer guides, and a thinner recommendation engine than Jockie or Chip. Some niche tracks that resolve via YouTube on other bots fail here.
Pricing:
- Free: 24/7 mode disabled, queue cap, ads at queue start
- Premium: $4.99/month per server
- vs Groovy: similar in feel, narrower in source list, more stable in practice
Migrating from Groovy: Slash commands, no prefix carryover. Re-import Spotify playlists by URL.
Add to server: tempobot.net
Bottom line: Pick Tempo if audio reliability is the single quality that matters and YouTube-only tracks are not a concern.
How to choose
- The closest thing to Groovy at scale, paid is fine: Jockie Music.
- A generous free tier with 24/7 mode: Lara Music.
- Free forever, occasional outages acceptable: FredBoat.
- Free features that match other bots’ Premium tiers: Beatra.
- Cheapest paid plan, single-room music: Chip.
- Music plus light moderation in one bot: Vexera.
- Best uptime, no YouTube source: Tempo.
A self-hosted Lavalink bot is the only way to get back to the exact Groovy era of no caps and no paywalls, and that comes with its own maintenance cost. For most servers, one of the seven picks above is the better trade.
FAQ
Is Groovy coming back? No. The Groovy team confirmed the shutdown was permanent and the domain has been dormant since 2021. Saved playlists, queues, and Premium subscriptions are gone.
What is the best free Groovy alternative? FredBoat for a true no-paywall option, and Lara Music if a 24/7 free tier with no ads is more important than feature depth.
Can I import my Groovy playlists into a new bot? No. Groovy deleted user data at shutdown. The closest workflow is to rebuild playlists in Spotify or Apple Music and queue them by URL.
Which bot has the best audio quality? Tempo and Jockie Music are the steadiest in testing. Both operate their own Lavalink fleets and stream at higher bitrates than the free tier of MEE6 or Vexera.
Why are most music bots paid now when Groovy was free? Licensed audio paths cost money, and the bots that survived the 2021 takedown wave needed a way to fund Spotify or Apple Music API access. FredBoat is the visible exception because it pays its costs through open contributions.
Does any bot still play YouTube videos directly? A few smaller ones try, but the legal status changed after 2021 and unlicensed YouTube playback carries takedown risk. The picks above route through Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, or a licensed source.
