Discord Premium Memberships: New Monetization for Creators

Discord Launches Premium Memberships for Creator Monetization

Discord is implementing a novel system enabling content creators to generate income by providing exclusive, subscriber-only content to their community members.

This new premium membership functionality represents one of the platform’s most highly anticipated features.

Streamlining Revenue and Community Growth

The introduction of premium memberships will establish a new, internally managed revenue stream for Discord.

It simultaneously offers Discord-based communities the opportunity to consolidate the tools they utilize for expansion and engagement.

Flexible Access Control

With premium memberships, Discord communities gain the ability to restrict access to portions or all of their content behind a payment barrier.

Servers can maintain a largely free and open structure, featuring a single premium channel reserved for their most devoted participants, or alternatively, an entire community can operate on a premium basis, necessitating payment for entry.

Initial Pilot Program

Currently, premium memberships are designated as a “very early pilot” program.

The feature will initially be deployed to a select group of communities for testing and feedback collection.

Communities participating in this initial phase include a gaming instruction service offering tutorials, the Trans Community Center, and Stream Professor, a resource server focused on streaming technology education.

Focus on Community Sustainability

“Ensuring the sustainability of running Discord communities is paramount,” stated Derek Yang, Discord’s lead product manager for creator products, in an interview with TechCrunch.

Yang indicated that a widespread release date for premium subscriptions has not yet been determined, emphasizing a deliberate, phased approach to refinement.

Integration with Existing Tools

Previously, many Discord communities relied on external platforms like Patreon to manage access to premium content.

By integrating this functionality directly within Discord, communities can now establish customized tiers of benefits for members to subscribe to, alongside their existing subscriptions to Discord’s Nitro features.

Revenue Sharing Model

The company intends to retain a 10% commission from paid membership subscriptions, a figure that may be subject to adjustment based on the outcomes of ongoing creator monetization experiments.

In May, Discord initiated testing of ticketed virtual events, marking its first venture into features designed to facilitate creator earnings on the platform.

Creator Value and Community Support

“Through conversations with an increasing number of creators, we recognized the need to not only facilitate community building but also to ensure its long-term viability,” Discord explained in a blog post.

“We are already observing a willingness among community members to financially support creators in exchange for the value they provide.”