In late 2020, Dazed ran an article titled “Why Discord is the most exciting place to be a stan right now” and explained why a new wave of musicians are using it to reach and grow their fanbase. “Unlike the publicly browsable Reddit or Twitter, Discord’s private servers host subcultures that allow those inside to geek out while leaving the average onlooker with much to discover,” it said. 

One of the biggest music acts on Discord is US producer and songwriter Kenny Beats. “This is a music production discord and should be treated as such,” he says at the end of his list of rules for his channel. And at the very top of the rules is a poorly rendered cartoon of him holding a gun. “These are the RULES! it roars. “Don’t do any stupid shit!”

He says on an introduction video that the channel has around 90,000 users and talks through the various chat categories – with “music” being broken into a series of sub-categories such as mixing, sound design and music theory (“Fucking nerd!” he snorts). It also has categories dealing with gear, engineering and collaborations. 

Most appealingly, however, is the rare samples thread and Beats says knowingly that he “may drop some things in there from time to time”.  

The threads are incredibly busy and are proof that Beats has built a large and active community that uses his music as the entry point to find like-minded individuals.

The fans appear to be doing most of the heavy lifting here which is arguably why it is so popular. Beats might be the catalyst but other fans are the main attraction for new users as they are not beaten down by an onslaught of Beats’ own self-promotion.

Beats himself does very little marketing on the platform and that is why it is so powerful. The users are here to talk about music and gaming and Beats is just the thread that ties them together. It is proof that taking a sales-heavy approach on a platform like Discord is far from ideal and that being hands-off probably delivers the best “marketing” results in the longer term.