I’m obviously being sarcastic, but after using Discord for the Milwaukee Hardcore scene as our main method of communication, things are actually really good. It’s a great way to promote shows on the internet without people having to see any external ads, Auntie posting about QAnon on Facebook, or Russian Twitter bots (or whatever the fuck Elon is doing). It’s more about communication that just for posting pictures like Instagram, which is great for having everyone on a level playing field. We’ve gotten up to about 130ish users at the time of writing, and, not to toot my own horn, but I really do think it’s helped our scene grow a little bit, and get new kids in. At a music fest I played this weekend, I talked to a few friends about it, and often got the response of “oh, that’s cool. I’d love to get something like that going in our city”. So, this is a guide to help anyone out with that. This isn’t necessarily the best way to do things, but it’s what works well for us. Just like any music stuff, take it and make it your own. You know your area and the people in it better than I do.
I’ll be using the terminology that Discord uses to talk about how I utilize certain features. I won’t go through all the step-by-step stuff explicitly in this guide, but if you get stuck or don’t understand how to do something, just give it a google or a search on the discord site, and you should find plenty of step-by-step guides to walk you through the specifics of setting that stuff up.
Discord is a messaging, voice chat, and video conferencing app, mainly targeted at online gamers. If you use apps like MS Teams or Slack for work, it’s a lot like that (slack is nearly identical). Once you sign up, any user can create a “server”. This isn’t something you need to have a dedicated computer for, or pay for AWS services or anything, it’s just what discord encapsulates their instances in. It’s not really the best terminology, but I kind of get it. Like when you host a game online now, your computer is essentially the “server”, and your friends all join. This is most likely where the terminology comes from. Maybe a “lobby” would make more sense? Anyway, a server is its own-contained platform. If you are in one server, the only way to get to other servers is to receive an invite. Likewise, the only way to get people into a server you create is to send an invite to them, or to make an invite link that anyone can click. You don’t have to worry about people you don’t invite coming into your server, if you don’t publically share the link. We keep the link to our server on the Milwaukee HC Instagram.
This walled-garden approach is great for moderation. By design, you don’t have to worry too much about weirdos coming into your server and spamming a bunch of bullshit, or just generally being the kind of people you don’t want at your shows. This might sound kinda mean, but If you look at any of the old message board from back in the mid 2000s, basically all of them were dumpster fires, and the non-exclusivity coupled with poor / no moderation made most basically unusable for getting people to actually come to shows. One of the main goals of this guide is to prevent that situation.
There are a few key things that I try to do to keep our server usable, efficient, fun and organized. Those are:
If your scene is really small, or you don’t know a ton of people, You could just get away with just having a “general” channel, and that’s it. The main rule to follow is: Only make a new channel if it’s something that will
So, if you anticipate a bunch of memes in main, make a meme’s channel. That should keep the discussion going, but keep the annoying stuff in its own box for the people who want to partake. It might also be a good idea to have a channel for stuff like Upcoming show flyers. That way when someone want’s to know what shows are happening, they can just look in the channel.
When I started the Milwaukee HC server, I made way to many channels. We had a games and sports channel, which have very little activity. The games channel hasn’t been posted in about a month, the sports one isn’t that better. These are what I’d call “dead channels”. The goal here is to keep the discussion going. If a channel isn’t really being used, then there isn’t a lot of reason to keep it around. Likewise, if you’re only getting a few posts in all of the channels, scaling back and keeping your main channel active is a good choice. Follow the rules above, and it should keep people talking in your server.
You don’t have to follow this template, but this is what I have set up: 
The shows section is for posting flyers, the music section is for posting music. Intro-bust is for introducing yourself. Pretty self-explanatory. If I was doing things over, I would axe the games and sports channels. But w/e.
Also, something to note, is that I don’t really enforce what gets posted in what channel too much. Unless someone is clogging up general with memes, if someone posts a show flyer for a HC show they’re booking in the music section, and people are talking about it, no big deal. Like I said, keeping the conversation going is priority number 1.
Discord lets you use roles, and Imo, they’re actually kind of useful here for more than just letting people know what games you play. I like to have a role for “Promoter”, so that everyone knows who to ask for shows. Likewise, you can use roles for other things people do in your scene (flyers, zines, ect), or what bands they are in.
I also like to keep the HC flyers channel restricted to only promoters posting. This keeps things from getting too spammy in a channel meant for easy reference. While this does kindof feel like it’s a little gate-keepy, and not really in the spirit of DIY music, I let people know they can just ask me for the promoter role. You booked a show? Guess what, you’re a promoter now. While it is just a dumb label, I feel like it does lend a bit of legitimacy to people that might have imposter issues. If you booked a show, you are a promoter. Take the dumb role, you earned it.
So, this is the main thing that I came up with to keep my moderation efforts low. I just have everyone in the server use their real names. In Discord, you can set a Server Profile, or a Nickname. From what I understand, these terms are used interchangeably in Discords documentation, and are the same thing. Anyway, I let people know in my rules, that you have a couple of days after joining the server to change their Nickname to their real name (or however they introduce themselves at shows), or they’ll get kicked. This isn’t the same as being banned, it just boots them out of the server, and they can re-join if they want. I always send a message letting the user know what rule they broke, and that they are free to re-join if they can follow it. No big deal.
The bonus here is that when you meet someone new at a show, you know that’s the person you’re talking to in the server. No need to remember that GlustickDelicious#4476 is really a nice guy named Dan or whatever. It helps put faces to names, and keeps people in check for the stuff they post up in their music scene. I’m generally of the mind that most internet culture and meme stuff is best kept separate from music. I go to shows to get away from the internet, and bands trying to internet culture stuff in real life don’t really have much staying power. That’s not really what you want when cultivating a music community. Don’t get me wrong, a little bit of internet stuff will be fun, but the idea here is to get people to come out of their apartments and into some shows. The more that your online community has that laid back concert vibe, the more conversation will happen, and the better things will be in your music community, online and off.
Discord is a great tool, but you never want it to be the destination of your community. Remember, the goal is to get people participating in music, connecting people in the scene, getting new bands and other stuff to start from people being connected.
If you’re looking for any more advice, or think there’s something important I should add to this guide, feel free to join up the Milwaukee Hardcore Discord, add me, and shoot me a PM. https://linktr.ee/mkehcshows
