Papa bless all of you content creators. Bearing your heart and soul on digital display is hard enough and then there’s the task of making a living from it. How do you break through the noise? How do you build a following? How can you follow your passion?

Step into this red telephone booth with me as we travel back in time for a radical history lesson…

In the medieval and Renaissance period, artists were commissioned by nobility, religious organizations, and wealthy individuals to create specific works of art.

This is called “patronage.”

As Wikipedia describes it, “patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes and the wealthy have provided to artists such as musicians, painters, and sculptors.”

So basically, people with a lot of money wanted some sweet art slapped on their domes and they commissioned some dope artists to do the work.

Not until the mid-19th century did European culture move away from this patronage system to more contemporary mass consumption that has allowed artists to make a living from lots of people buying their stuff.

Fast forward many moons to May 2013 when Patreon launches. Patreon (who’s name comes from the aforementioned Patronage), aims to recreate, to an extent, the old-school style of patronage in a modern format. Fans are “patrons” and pay the creators for producing art.

Furthermore, as Discord is already being used as a community tool for content creators, it made sense to hook up the two services.

Brent Horowitz, the VP of Business and Corporate Development at Patreon said to me in an email, “At Patreon, we are all about helping creators build close-knit communities with their top fans. Enabling Discord roles via Patreon rewards does just that by giving gaming fans an exciting and relevant way to engage with their favorite streamers. And just as cool — this partnership with Discord gives creators more tools to make a living doing what they love.”

We love Patreon’s passion and enthusiasm for connecting creators with their fans and are glad to share this new StreamKit integration.

At it’s core, this integration allows content creators to offer Discord-specific perks to their patrons through rewards.

Not only that — it’s super duper double dimple simple to set up. Check it:

To set up the perks as a creator is straightforward. First, on Patreon, head over to the creator page settings.

Click the purple button of destiny and it’ll pop up this screen (or it’ll ask you to log in first):

Choose the server you’d like and select Authorize to get the integration going.

Now you can add Discord roles as a perk to any of your reward tiers. Edit a reward and you’ll see this box in the settings:

For this to properly work, the Patreon role in your Discord server must be above any roles it’s controlling. Check out Patreon’s support article if you’re having issues setting any of this up.

As a patron, connecting Discord is simple dimple too. Head over to your account settings and sync things there. The Patreon bot will automatically assign the appropriate roles to users.

We’re excited to see the relationship between creator and fans get tighter as well as communities get stronger as content creators live their dream.