Classical KUSC 4+

I downloaded the KUSC app when they began to promote the Classical Holiday Music Playlist in 2019 and I just loved it! I enjoyed it again in 2020, I wish it was a perpetual playlist!

The Classical California Movie Music Playlist they created this year for Oscar season has been equally as great, though I do wish they would include more actual movie music scores than soundtracks of classical music used for the movies. Current movie music composers such as Danny Elfman, Thomas, David and Randy Newman and Hans Zimmer have as much music to draw from as the well known and beloved John Williams, and newer composer Michael Giacchino has more movie music to utilize than just the score from ‘Up’ which has been in heavy rotation. And how about the great Max Steiner?! I’d love to see the movie music playlist expanded next year to share actual scored movie music than to hear the same classical music played in the regular rotation. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing Beethoven and Mozart but it’s time to include ORIGINAL movie scores as classical music.

If KUSC can play Gershwin (which was a marriage of Jazz with a classical music orchestra) then including more music by ALL the movie music composers would be a great step in a great direction, especially when movie music might be the first entry to classical music for young folks. Let’s foster classical music in the young!

I have been listening to your wonderful station music beginning with my preteen years. My angel of a mother saved up Blue Chip stamps, we glued them into the books, then over time went to the Blue Chip stamp store. It was our special project, just the two of us. She asked me to pick out anything I wanted. My choice was a transistor eight radio using 9 Volt batteries. I tuned around to the various stations and stopped at 91.5, KUSC, and never moved the dial again. Your wonderful playlist gave me endless pleasure and enjoyment, getting through the difficult times and challenges. There was no music of any kind in our home whatsoever. Nothing. your station placed me into a wonderful world, and there my journey of classical knowledge began. This has continued now for over six decades. Thank you for providing and sharing an outstanding service to the community and now to the world. You are the best, first and last! Mary Lou, Escondido, California

I love living in a time when I can listen to my favorite radio station from growing up in SoCal in the sixties in much of the world. While programming has evolved over the past half century, I appreciate that unlike other “classical radio stations” online KUSC is still run like a real radio station with curated playlist and programming - curated by actual musicians and musicologists, not by algorithms developed to curate whatever is popular this week or even just thrown together at random. The app has typically worked well over the years and I appreciate the ability to select from many (semi)fixed playlists in addition to just running the live stream. The sleep timer is also an unusual and very nice feature, I just wish it was technically feasible to be able to set it up to either fade away instead of cutting off, or to play until the end of the current track.

That said, the app is not as stable as it was in earlier versions. It now has a tendency to stop playing when I set the phone down and it goes to lock screen. In terms of programming, I prefer programming that emphasizes complete pieces, not just isolated movements from pieces. KUSC does pretty well at this but not as well as in the past. I guess they may be pandering to people with short attention spans.