On Friday, something major happened in the music world. You might have heard about it.

Alternative metal act Tool finally released their back catalog onto streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and all of the others.

I was massively excited for this — fellow Weekender staffer Toni Pennello and myself referred to last Friday as “Tool Day” — and, based on the reaction the rest of the internet has had, lots of other people were excited, too.

And it’s easy to understand why: Tool, regardless of whether this was one of their intentions or not, became one of those bands that “serious music nerds” are supposed to like. You know the sort of posts — “You’re not a real music fan unless you’ve listened to everything by Frank Zappa, Radiohead and Tool.”

Over time, Tool has garnered this reputation of being a band with dazzlingly complex musical structures, the kind of thing “serious music nerds” (and I use that phrase in quotes because I hate gatekeeping nonsense like that) would like, but also still having enough popular music sensibilities that they were able to send several records straight to the top of the charts in the late 90s and early 2000s.

But, for years, they didn’t allow their music to be listened to digitally. Back when iTunes (remember iTunes?) dominated the scene, you couldn’t buy hits like “Hooker with a Penis” to play on your iPod (remember iPods?). And until last weekend, you couldn’t stream their music online. Which ultimately meant that, if you were dedicated to only listening to music digitally and were either too lazy or too moral to pirate their records, you could only hear Tool occasionally on your local rock radio station.

I swear this isn’t really an article about Tool, as much as it might seem like it. Instead, it’s about the fact that we’re truly in a “new era” now.

Tool was hardly the only major holdout that was resistant to allowing their music on streaming services — at one point or another, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, the Beatles, and plenty of others held back — but they are distinctive for being perhaps the last major holdout in rock music, especially after King Crimson finally relented earlier this year. Fans of other genres are still waiting for major players like De La Soul and Aaliyah, but for fans of rock, Tool’s final acceptance of the 21st century marks a transition between two eras.

So, practically speaking, what does this mean?

For the purposes of the artists, it helps to illustrate just how important Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal are to the modern media landscape. It’s not easy to estimate exactly how much revenue Tool missed out on by being the final streaming holdout, but anecdotally, I can say there are plenty of music fans who were tweeting and otherwise posting about how excited they were to be listening to a full-length Tool record for the first time. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was one such listener.

Streaming, whether artists like it or not, isn’t the future of music consumption. It’s the present; if your music can’t be streamed, people won’t listen to your music. Underground rappers might be able to build up an audience on SoundCloud, just like metal and punk bands who congregate around Bandcamp, but it’s clear that mainstream streaming services are where the real money is.

The problem, though, is that there isn’t a whole lot of money to be made. A commentary piece from CNBC from January last year suggests that Spotify pays far less than a penny for each time a song is streamed, meaning it’s only the biggest artists who are able to make a living off streaming revenue alone. Taylor Swift, for example, likely only made around $300,000 for nearly 50 million streams of “Shake It Off.” It’s a lot more money than many of us make a year, but at that rate, less famous artists who might only get a few thousand streams will be lucky to buy themselves dinner off their biggest hit.

To make matters worse, streaming isn’t particularly profitable for the companies that do it, either. That same CNBC piece that Spotify, despite having a huge market share, isn’t actually profitable. Despite the fact that we’re locked into this system because it’s the most convenient thing possible for the listener, it’s losing money for virtually everyone else.

And this doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that streaming is likely terrible for the environment, due to the vast amount of energy all the servers required to let you listen to your music actually use up.

This isn’t all to vilify streaming. I’m streaming music during nearly every waking moment. It’s allowed me to hear so much more music than I ever would’ve been able to if I were required to buy a physical record or even an mp3. But I’m starting to think Tool might have been right: it’s all just a house of cards, destined to collapse at some point.

But we might as well enjoy it until it does.

By Patrick Kernan

pkernan@timesleader.com

Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan