As Downloads Dip, Music Executives Cast a Wary Eye on Streaming Services

Now even that certainty seems to have disappeared, as downloads head toward their first yearly decline.

So far this year, 1.01 billion track downloads have been sold in the United States, down 4 percent from the same time last year, according to the tracking service Nielsen SoundScan. Album downloads are up 2 percent, to 91.9 million; combining these results using the industry’s standard yardstick of 10 tracks to an album, total digital sales are down almost 1 percent.

After enjoying double-digit growth in the years after Apple opened its iTunes store in 2003, song downloads began to cool several years ago. But the rate of decline this year — weekly sales began to lag in February, and the drop has accelerated rapidly in recent months — has caught the business by surprise.

Music executives and analysts disagree about exactly what is causing this slowdown, but many cite streaming music services like Pandora, Spotify and YouTube as one possible cause. After a decade, consumers may be losing interest in buying downloads and instead turning to the streaming services, which make millions of songs available at the tap of a smartphone app, free or for a few dollars a month.

Even as downloads decline, however, some experts say that rapidly growing income from streaming may finally help turn the overall industry toward positive results. Last year, streaming and subscription services generated $1.03 billion in revenue, up 59 percent from the year before, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and many of these providers are reporting robust growth this year.

Whether streaming has had any demonstrable effect on sales remains intensely debated, though. Do Spotify and YouTube, which let users choose the songs they play, cannibalize sales, or lead listeners to songs they may buy later? And do Pandora and other radiolike providers — Apple introduced a similar feature, iTunes Radio, last month — compete with sales at all, or just with radio?

“We just don’t know that consumers are abandoning one to go to the other,” said David Bakula, a senior analyst at Nielsen.

Some experts also point to the rise of Android devices as a possible factor in the drop in downloads. While phones using Google’s operating system now represent a majority of sales, Google’s Play store remains eclipsed by iTunes, by far the dominant music retailer.

Some research also suggests that Android users may spend less money on music than Apple customers. The NPD Group, a market research firm, reported this year that 54 percent of iPhone users — whose operating system is iOS — said in a survey that they were likely to buy music, compared with 30 percent for Android customers.

“As Android expands its market, and if Android users are less likely than iOS users to pay for music, we should expect to see evidence of changes in digital sales,” said Glenn Peoples, the senior editorial analyst at Billboard.

No publicly available sales data directly supports this premise, however, and others dispute it. Mr. Bakula, the Nielsen analyst, said that “whether or not Android users download less than iOS users, there’s no reason to think that that is having any impact on year-over-year sales.”

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

Whatever the reason for the decline in downloads, many analysts and executives say they are bullish on the industry’s prospects, largely because of the rise of streaming.

“A variety of access models are collectively generating a healthy amount of revenue for labels and artists,” said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the recording industry association. “We’ve still got a ways to go, but when you add up revenues from all of these models, in the aggregate, they represent real revenues now and prospects for a bright future.”

App Smart: Streaming for a Good Beat That’s Just to Your Taste

Since then, the music landscape has undergone a sea change. But discovering music in a similar way is still possible via the latest and fast-evolving trend in digital music: streaming.

Perhaps the best-known streaming music app is Spotify. This app lets you listen to any of your favorite tracks at will, and it is also a digital radio that streams new music. Its interface is simple, bordering on spartan: it has a main screen where you control the music you are hearing, and a menu screen that lets you access different sections of the app and adjust settings.

To listen to a track you simply choose “Search” and type the artist’s name or a word from the track’s title. Spotify then lists the results by artist, album and song title. A more interesting way to use the app, however, is to select the “Discover” option. This reveals a long graphics-heavy list containing all sorts of different music.

Some of this will be familiar (right now, my app is telling me “You’ve been listening to a lot of Daft Punk lately” and recommends one of their albums), some of it will be new. These tracks include new releases, and music that is popular or is being listened to by nearby Spotify users.

There’s also a “Radio” option that has “stations” that stream either a particular band’s music, or genres of your choice, from Alternative to Trance. The app has straightforward controls and will show you album art and even band biographies.

Spotify has changed how I listen to music. But while the app is free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, using it may cost you. In the United States, you can listen to the app’s radio stations free, but to listen to specific tracks you’ll have to subscribe for $10 a month.

For a different experience, you might try Rhapsody (which in some places overseas goes under the Napster brand). As in Spotify, you can search for music you want to hear, or discover new music through a few different routes. For example, the Browse section breaks music into genres; inside each genre’s page you can choose from new releases or popular tracks.

Alternatively, you can find new music through Rhapsody’s home page, which offers access to featured music, new releases and popular tracks. There are also Playlists, which are a little like Spotify’s stations. These lists have a regularly updated selection of music that will stream to you. There are extras like album reviews, so you can learn more about the artist you’re listening to.

Rhapsody’s interface is graphically richer and feels easier to navigate than Spotify’s, thanks to features like its ever-present icon bar. Bu you may find that Rhapsody’s graphics and many settings get in the way of your listening experience. It’s free to download on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, but you’ll have to pay $10 a month for unlimited music streaming.

Last.fm was one of the first players that streamed music over the Internet, and now it’s available as an app. Instead of concentrating on giving you access to new music, a bit like traditional radio, Last.fm tries to recommend new music based on the tracks you already listen to. In fact, it monitors music that you play through your mobile device, and keeps a list of it in your profile — a trick it calls “scrobbling.”

The scrobbled list can be shared online and is used to recommend lists of music similar to the kind you already like. The data comes from other Last.fm users’ lists. Last.fm is powerful and entertaining, but its interface is more basic than its peers’ and it doesn’t quite have the same range of music discovery options. And, though the app is free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, to listen to the recommended lists you have to pay $3 a month.

Finally, there’s SoundCloud, a free app for iOS and Android that offers a different kind of streaming music. Where Spotify is like having radio on your phone, SoundCloud is more about hearing new music shared by indie artists via a social network. It has a wonderfully simple interface and it’s fun to use — you can upload your own music and share that too. Just don’t expect to find mainstream rock bands on this app.

Hopefully, you’ll find tons of new music to listen to via these apps, but remember there are other options. The Pandora app is well known and definitely worth trying. Apple is also poised to introduce iTunes Radio — a free service with advertisements. Streaming music is a fast-changing scene, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for special offers.

Quick Call

Telenav Scout, a successful GPS navigation app that’s done well on Android and iOS, has finally hit Windows Phone 8 devices. The core app is free, but advanced features like red light alerts will cost you $25 a year.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Streaming Netflix Video on Multiple Devices

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Streaming Netflix Video on Multiple Devices

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Hotel Guests Turn Away From TV and Toward Streaming Media

Mr. Markidan, who spends 40 percent of his time traveling on business and is an elite participant in the Hilton and Hyatt loyalty programs, takes his MacBook Pro and iPad with him on the road and watches all television programs by streaming them on his laptop, using a portable router to extend the Wi-Fi signal in his hotel room.

“For a lot of people my age and a lot of people in general, the way we consume entertainment at home is changing,” he said. “I no longer have a cable subscription — the way I watch entertainment at home is the same way I watch it on the road. I have a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

Guest-room entertainment “is not an amenity that will drive my decision to stay at a hotel,” he said, adding, “I’m a lot more concerned with loyalty program perks.”

James Lingle of Highlands Ranch, Colo., a consultant to hotel companies and guest-room entertainment service providers like LodgeNet’s competitor iBahn, observed: “If you look back, typically the first thing a guest would do when they walked into the door of a hotel room would be to turn on the TV. Now people bring their entertainment with them, tablet-based devices like an iPad, accounts and memberships like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus, and they want to be able to use them.”

LodgeNet’s decline directly reflects these changes. According to its bankruptcy filing, the number of hotel rooms it served globally dropped to 1.5 million in 2011 from 2 million in 2009. It provided guest-room entertainment services to most major hotel chains, usually by installing and maintaining free televisions and offering video-on-demand entertainment, for which it and the hotels received fees. LodgeNet’s sales in 2011 were $421.3 million, a 21 percent drop from a high of $533.9 million in 2008.

Colony Capital, a real estate and hotel investment firm in Los Angeles, led a group that invested $70 million in a controlling interest in LodgeNet, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and brought in a management team of former Starwood, Fairmont and Hilton executives. LodgeNet, which emerged from bankruptcy in late March, also signed an agreement with DirecTV to jointly offer entertainment to hotels and hospitals.

The revamped LodgeNet faces strong competition from companies including Swisscom Hospitality Services, based in Geneva; iBahn, based in Salt Lake City; Guest-Tek, of Calgary, Alberta; and Roomlinx, based in Broomfield, Colo. All are developing systems that let travelers consume entertainment the way Mr. Markidan does — via the Internet, frequently through subscriptions they already have and use at home, either through Wi-Fi or a direct cable connection between their laptop or tablet and the guest-room television set.

Different types of hotels have different policies regarding Internet access. Many less expensive hotels offer it free, while more expensive ones often charge for it. What’s expected to happen next, speaking broadly, is that using the Internet for e-mail will be free, while many hotels will charge for uses requiring a lot of bandwidth, like  downloading or streaming videos, with the cost tied to the amount of bandwidth required.

“We will give customers more short-form content at very attractive prices, affinity packages of sports channels, just-missed TV, video games, as well as movies currently in theaters,” said Michael Ribero, Lodgenet’s new chief executive. “We want to give them the opportunity to watch what they want, even if it’s through Netflix and Amazon Prime.” He said LodgeNet will no longer provide television equipment in hotel guest rooms in exchange for video-on-demand fees. Instead, DirecTV will offer hotel owners lease financing for TVs, freeing capital that LodgeNet can invest in product and service improvements.

VUDU Movie Streaming Service User Data Stolen

Vudu, a popular on-demand HD video streaming app that enables users to watch their favorite TVs and movies online as well as on Android tablets, Roku, Xbox 360 and PS3, experienced a break-in at its Santa Clara offices.

In addition to other objects of value, criminals made off with hardrives, which Vudu employees concluded had user data— names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, account activity and the last four digits of credit card numbers.

It's important to note that the drives did NOT contain full credit card numbers, as we do not store that information," Vudu CTO Prasanna Ganesan wrote in the email to users.

The break-in affected users who directly use the Vudu site or app only — users who have accessed media via other websites on Vudu are unaffected by the break-in. Ganesan says that all of the passwords on the harddrives were encrypted, but users should still be vigilant "given the circumstances" of the theft.

Vudu has already expired and reset the passwords of compromised users, and has advised everyone to be cautious about suspicious emails or phone calls from Vudu or other companies. In addition, Vudu is offering a year's worth of fraud and identity protection service AllClear ID in case anything does happen, with additional enrollment steps.

Got questions? Vudu has set up a FAQ to answer pertinent questions.

What do you think about Vudu's break-in? Let us know in the comments.

Lauren Hockenson is a tech reporter and 8-bit enthusiast who dreams of being a wizard. She can be found on MyIGN at lhockenson or on Twitter at @lhockenson.

Bits: Streaming Sites and the Rise of Shared Accounts

We were each going to use HBO Go, the network’s video Web site, to stream the show online — but not our own accounts. To gain access, one friend planned to use the login of the father of a childhood friend. Another would use his mother’s account. I had the information of a guy in New Jersey that I had once met in a Mexican restaurant.

Our behavior — sharing password information to HBO Go, Netflix, Hulu and other streaming sites and services — appears increasingly prevalent among Web-savvy people who don’t own televisions or subscribe to cable.

It’s hard to know exactly how common it is: traditional analytics firms like Nielsen and comScore can’t track it, and cultural research organizations like Pew haven’t done extensive surveying about it. An informal BuzzFeed survey, which was a partial inspiration for this column, found that several dozen people in its office used someone else’s account information for HBO Go. And based on countless anecdotes, conversations, tweets and text messages, such behavior seems to be on the rise.

“It also seems like a pretty serious problem,” wrote John Herrman, a senior editor at BuzzFeed and author of the polling report. “While our office is fairly young and not representative of HBO’s broader customer base, it is representative of a rising generation of people who 1) like watching HBO shows and 2) cannot fathom paying for them.”

Do the companies, particularly HBO, view this as especially problematic? I hesitated before asking, worried that any inquiries would prompt a crackdown, with the result that I’d become the most-hated person on the Internet.

But to the collective relief of nearly everyone I know, the companies with whom I spoke seemed to have little to no interest in curbing our sharing behavior — in part because they can’t. They have little ability to track and curtail their customers who are sharing account information, according to Jeff Cusson, senior vice president for corporate affairs at HBO. And, he said, the network doesn’t view the sharing “as a pervasive problem at this time.”

According to HBO, 6.5 million of its 30 million subscribers have signed up for HBO Go. When I asked Mr. Cusson if the network would consider figuring out a way to capture and monetize those slippery users who were piggybacking on others’ accounts, he declined to speculate on what might be possible.

“The best business approach at the time is in the business model that we currently have,” he said.

In other words, it isn’t financially viable for HBO to offer a cheaper, digital-only subscription, either sold separately or bundled to an Internet service. So, to a point, account sharing is allowed.

OTHER subscription streaming services have a different approach. Spotify, the music streaming service, does not allow two people to play songs simultaneously using the same account. A representative at Hulu says that the company’s paid subscription service, Hulu Plus, is designed for a single user and that the company doesn’t let people stream the same show to different screens at the same time. (Amazon and Netflix did not respond to requests for interviews, but both companies have similar mechanisms in place for their services, though different users on the same account can watch different programs at the same time.)

On Amazon Prime, for example, if two people try to watch the same episode of “Pretty Little Liars” using the same account, both streams will be frozen and a warning message will flash. But one user can simply watch something else until the first person is done trying to figure out who “A” is.

This feels like a missed opportunity for all these services. It’s the failure to grasp the future of television as a shared social experience online. Sure, we are all scattered around, watching all sorts of programs. But then there are moments, as in the days of old, when we are all huddled together — figuratively speaking — tuning into the same show or event at about the same time each night. These days, though, we are watching through some kind of connected device, whether it’s a smartphone, a laptop or a Web-connected television.

Nor does social viewing have to be around a big event. For example, I watched “Friday Night Lights” all winter on Netflix, along with someone I don’t know who also shares the account. Every time I log in, I can see the last episode that this mystery viewer watched — and yet there’s currently no way for us to chat about our reactions to it. That would be much more fun than bugging my other friends about plot twists and turns they saw ages ago, when the show was first broadcast.

Advertising: ABC Works on an App for Live Streaming Shows to Mobile Devices

The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing those subscribers to watch “Good Morning America” on a tablet while standing in line at Starbucks, for instance, or watch “Nashville” on a smartphone while riding a bus home from work. The app could become available to some subscribers this year, according to people briefed on the project, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

With the app, ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, will become the first of the American broadcasters to provide a live Internet stream of national and local programming to people who pay for cable or satellite. The subscriber-only arrangement, sometimes called TV Everywhere in industry circles, preserves the cable business model that is crucial to the bottom lines of broadcasters, while giving subscribers more of what they seem to want — mobile access to TV shows. The arrangement could extend the reach of ads that appear on ABC as well.

Disney already distributes similar live streaming and on-demand apps, known as “Watch” apps, for ESPN and the Disney Channel. Special hurdles exist, however, for the ABC app, in part because of contracts between the network and the companies that produce some of its shows that were written before mobile phone video streaming was even possible. Other complexities involve ABC’s local stations, which might — if not courted properly — feel threatened by an app.

But ABC, seeing shifts in consumer behavior, is pressing forward. It has started to talk with stations about how to include them in the live streaming app. Illustrating the difficult contractual issues, ABC offhandedly first mentioned a forthcoming Watch ABC app in a news release nine months ago, when it signed a deal with Comcast to make several Watch Disney apps available to Comcast subscribers.

But the network live streaming ability is inching closer to fruition, the people briefed on the project said. A spokesman for ABC declined to comment.

Executives at other networks who have heard about the ABC plan regard it with a mixture of awe and fear. No other broadcaster is believed to be as far along as ABC, which is also the first broadcaster to sell TV episodes through Apple’s iTunes store and the first to stream free episodes on its Web site.

Subscriber-only apps like Watch Disney and, eventually, Watch ABC stand in stark contrast to the free-to-all content available on Hulu, the online video site that is co-owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corporation. Comcast is a silent partner. The other two companies are debating what to do with the six-year-old Web site, which has lost most of its original executive backers at NBC and Fox and will soon lose its founding chief executive, Jason Kilar.

Last week, when Mr. Kilar, who is stepping down this month, named an acting chief executive, Andy Forssell, he wrote in a message to staff members that “Disney and News Corporation are currently finalizing their forward-looking plans with Hulu, and the senior team has been working closely with them in that process. Once the plans are finalized, a permanent decision will be made regarding the C.E.O. position.”

Hulu has been an innovator in both the Web streaming and the advertising arenas, forcing media companies to think about how their TV shows should be distributed online. But it has been marginalized as the companies seek out more lucrative revenue streams.

Under one plan discussed recently, according to several people with ties to Hulu, Disney would buy out the other co-owners’ stakes in the company. But the opposite could happen, too, with News Corporation as the buyer. Or the two companies may choose to sell Hulu to a third party, if one shows interest.

The companies could also retain their stakes in Hulu and change the business model. Disney is said to be more supportive of the free, ad-supported model that it is most closely associated with; News Corporation is more supportive of Hulu Plus, the monthly subscription service that is an add-on to the free Hulu site. Mr. Kilar, in his message last week, did not indicate when any change could take place.

Whatever happens, the owners appear more interested in maintaining their existing relationships with cable and satellite companies. That is what an app like Watch ABC would do. It would protect the cable model while providing a good example of how authentication — the idea that people log in to prove they have a subscription — works.

A few cable and satellite companies already have their own products that allow ABC and other broadcasters to be streamed on devices. But for most Americans, it remains difficult to place-shift a show — say, to watch a local nightly newscast live on an iPhone.

A start-up company that is being sued by Disney and several other major media companies, Aereo, has made that possible by installing an antenna farm in New York; some analysts have said Aereo might motivate broadcasters to make their own live streams more freely available on their own terms. But James L. McQuivey, a digital media analyst at Forrester and the author of the book “Digital Disruption,” said he thought ABC’s plan wasn’t a rebuttal to the start-up.

“This and Aereo are both a response to the fact that people are habitually connected to live viewing,” he said. “The Internet will gradually undo that,” he predicted, “but it’s being very gradual about that for the time being.”

Brooks Barnes contributed reporting.

Gadgetwise Blog: A Streaming Player for the Digital Media Enthusiast

The WD TV Play media player from Western Digital can stream stored content to a TV by USB port or wirelessly.

As Western Digital expands its effort to link your devices and the content stored on them, it has set its sights on the gadget that dominates the living room: the TV.

With its WD TV Play streaming media player, Western Digital is going head to head with some big competitors. Its media player offers about 30 apps, including popular ones like Netflix and YouTube, but this is hardly enough to compete with powerhouses like Roku, which offers hundreds of apps, and Apple TV, which has fewer than a dozen but provides content via iTunes.

Instead, Western Digital is focusing on streaming content already stored on a computer or external drive. WD TV Play, which costs $70, has a long list of video formats that it can stream to a TV in 1080p resolution, either by USB port for external storage drives or wirelessly with DLNA-compatible devices.

Unfortunately, Apple devices do not support the DLNA standard, so WD TV Play does not recognize Apple products, which are plentiful in my home. To help, I downloaded Plex, a software program that manages content on Mac computers and facilitates streaming. WD TV Play recognized Plex, but could not stream the content. So I moved it to a My Book Live external hard drive, also from Western Digital. After a few hiccups, I was more successful there, although the player could not stream M4V files, which are in a format developed by Apple.

Setup of the media player was simple, and the TV interface was easy to navigate and personalize. Streaming from Netflix and Pandora was smooth, and I was able to post updates on Facebook. The player includes a remote control, but Western Digital offers a free app that turns a smartphone into a remote. My coffee table is littered with remotes, so one less to take up precious real estate is a welcome idea.

For PC users with a large collection of digital media, WD TV Play is a great way to have access to all that content from a TV. Mac users may have to do a little troubleshooting first.

Netflix Fixes a Disruption to Its Video Streaming

Should drowsy driving be prosecuted like drunken driving? Or, Room for Debate asks, is nodding off simply an accident – like hitting a patch of ice?

Without proper controls, the use of unmanned aircraft could threaten privacy.

French Music Streaming Service Takes on the World, Sans America

The company, Deezer, is one of the biggest players in digital music streaming, trailing only the market leader, Spotify, in the number of paying customers it has attracted globally. Like Spotify, which is based in London, Deezer, with headquarters in Paris, offers subscribers unlimited access to millions of songs on demand, via PCs, mobile phones and other devices.

Deezer just got a big endorsement for its approach. Access Industries, the owner of Warner Music Group, pumped 100 million euros, or about $130 million, into Deezer this month, in what analysts described as one of the biggest investments ever in a French start-up.

“This shows that they think the music market is beginning to turn around,” Axel Dauchez, chief executive of Deezer, said in an interview.

Deezer, which started in 2007, has just moved into a slick new headquarters, where employees conduct business meetings on lawn chairs and on sofas disguised as musical keyboards. “Paint it black,” reads a neon sign on the somber-toned wall behind Mr. Dauchez. Like the Rolling Stones, Deezer is on a mission to blot out the color red — in this case, from the ailing music industry’s ledgers.

After a battle with piracy that has cut its sales in half in just over a decade, the music industry has high hopes for streaming, which is growing faster than digital purchases, as many listeners decide that ownership makes less sense than in the days of plastic and vinyl.

While Deezer and Spotify are still losing money, their sales are growing rapidly. Deezer generated about 50 million euros in revenue last year, and Mr. Dauchez has set a goal of 1 billion euros in sales in 2016.

With more than two million paying customers, Deezer trails Spotify, which has more than four million. Spotify introduced an American version last year, and it has been growing quickly. But Deezer has turned its back on the United States and plans to use its new money to finance an expansion into more than 160 other countries.

“Like a canny general who decides to march around a heavily fortified stronghold and thus effectively leave it stranded behind enemy lines, so Deezer expects the streaming war to be waged on different shores,” Mark Mulligan, a music industry analyst, wrote on his Web site. “They are both right and wrong.”

Analysts say Deezer is right to worry about competition in the United States, where Spotify competes with services like Rhapsody, Pandora and Rdio, even though their business models all vary slightly.

Mr. Mulligan says there is room for growth in the United States, because premium streaming services remain too expensive for most consumers. But the field is less crowded outside the United States, where Spotify is the clear leader in streaming in many of the markets it has entered — except France, where Deezer reigns.

Spotify, too, is planning for the battles ahead. Several people briefed on the company’s plans said it had begun a new round of fund-raising, seeking to secure several hundred million dollars in new investment.

New financing is essential for Deezer and Spotify because they are burning through significant amounts of cash. To attract new listeners, both companies offer free versions of their services, subject to certain restrictions. Yet both companies must pay a royalty to a recording company every time someone listens to one of their tracks.

While streaming services sell advertising to cover some of the costs of free listening, Mr. Dauchez said raising revenue in this way had proved to be more challenging than expected. So Deezer now sees its free service primarily as a way to entice listeners into paying for its premium offerings, which include things like unlimited streaming and special content and recommendations, along with no ads.

This makes expanding into new markets expensive. While Deezer says it was profitable last year, it expects to lose money until 2014 as it enters new markets. The company set up sites in several other European countries in 2011 and accelerated its global expansion this month.

TV Sports: NBC Olympics Delay and Streaming Bring Complaints on Twitter

The past animosity rested on tape-delaying certain marquee sports into prime time. But now Twitter has turned into a fiery digital soapbox against NBC, as its users have merged their resentment over tape delay with problems viewing the live streams.

The outrage has been distilled, simply, into #nbcfail. It is difficult for now to determine if #nbcfail represents a tiny minority or is a sampling of a widespread problem.

NBC believes it is the former.

The ire of #nbcfail was stoked Sunday when Vivian Schiller, NBC’s recently hired chief digital officer, retweeted a message that said “the medal for most Olympic whining goes to everyone complaining about what happens every 4 yrs., tape delay.”

She approvingly added “+1” to the Twitter posting, which was written by Jonathan Wald, the executive producer of “Piers Morgan Tonight” on CNN.

Schiller, a former New York Times executive who resigned last year from NPR amid controversy, quickly became the corporate symbol of anger about tape-delaying sports and the opening ceremony. And she isn’t even in the sports division.

To a degree, she wasn’t wrong. Complaining about tape delay is an Olympic sport in its way.

But the fans aren’t wrong either in their dislike of tape delay, a vestige of 1960s Olympic television production pioneered by ABC’s Roone Arledge.

It has been an effective tool for all Olympic networks, which have rationalized its use with this mantra: we hold the marquee sports until prime time to harvest the highest rating and optimize our advertising so we can afford our ever-increasing rights fees.

But fans long upset with tape delay have reason to keep complaining. Major sports are always televised live. Why not the Olympics? And with the tools available to NBC — multiple networks and the Internet — an all-live Olympics is possible.

And in a digital age, aggrieved fans can take to social media to protest in a way that was never available until recently. And yet, even in a digital age, NBC’s Olympic economics are still based largely on prime time — and the returns so far from London are stellar: 40.7 million viewers for the opening ceremony and 28.7 million for the first night of competition Saturday. Are all those who hate tape delay not watching or are they reluctant parts of the audience, knowing there’s no other way to watch the Games?

Still, NBC cannot fully savor the success, at least not yet. By streaming all sports live to an audience more ravenous than ever for video content on computers, iPads and smartphones, NBC might have believed it had found a complaint cure-all. If no streams were held until the events aired on tape in prime time, how could anyone complain about delay? If fans absolutely had to see Michael Phelps swim live, they could see it. Up to 40 live streams are available at once. Such a fetching bonanza sounds ideal, doesn’t it?

But people want what they want when they want it — and they don’t want the video to freeze, skip, pixelate or buffer excessively. Some who wanted to watch Phelps race Ryan Lochte live (many hours before they raced, on delay, on NBC) were disappointed when the live streams seized up as if hexed by an NBC rival.

Twitter has lit up with similar complaints — some satisfied customers have tweeted, too — from fans who don’t want to hear that the trouble might be on their end: their broadband service’s bandwidth; the age of their computers and mobile devices; thunderstorms; the number of people in an apartment building also streaming; or interference in the ionosphere from Ryan Seacrest’s Freedom Tower-size pompadour.

NBC did nothing to caution fans that any of these problems might arise or that they might have an imperfect experience. Those helpful advisories should have been posted on nbcolympics.com next to where users sign in to access video. Perhaps nobody should have anticipated perfection; this is a huge undertaking that probably could not have been tested by millions of users to mimic the actual experience once the Games began.