Badpuppyradio.com Shuts Down

Badpuppy Enterprises Inc. co-owner Bill Pinyon said the eight-channel station succumbed to its online popularity. The stations played music which ranged from country to urban dance to club music that included music from Peaches, Lexy & K-Paul and DJ Encore, among others.

It also offered downloadable tracks for 85 cents a song.

“Shortly after launching Badpuppy Radio, and I mean within two weeks, we were contacted by a representative from Apple Computers’ iTunes project,” Pinyon said. “ITunes liked the quality of our feeds so much they wanted to include all eight of the Badpuppy Radio music streams in the ‘recommended radio’ list of the software.

“We had absolutely no clue just how popular iTunes would make us,” said Pinyan, who noted that within 10 minutes of having the country station listed on iTunes it had over 300 people listening at 128k bandwidth speed each.

Under wrap for several months, the company spent time building its new business by licensing with the recording industry groups and planning which software, hardware, music and bandwidth to use.

But Badpuppy had anticipated that music downloads and advertising would cover the cost of the bandwidth, Pinyon said. It didn’t.

“Just to put it in perspective, 225 people can take up one-half of the bandwidth capacity that we have,” Pinyon said. “In reality, for us to replace the amount of bandwidth that has been used would cost in the neighborhood of $8,000 per month and that is only for one channel.”

Flagship portal Badpuppy.com reaches the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender community. The company, which recently acquired search engine GayWhosWho.com, got its start as a BBS homepage operated out of co-owner Pinyon’s bedroom in 1995.

Pinyon said the closing of the music portal is “bittersweet.”

“At this time we’ve decided to forgo this avenue and refocus our energies on other projects,” Pinyon said. “Music has always played a very important part of my life; not just listening but playing and creating it as well.”