Thread of your niche YouTube interests.

OK here are some of my YT subs. Some of it is _really_ niche, some of it not so "niche" but folks here may not know about these channels.

Free The Kinescopes! (6.66 subscribers at present) has, well, uploads of old kinescopes. You want to see old episodes of Johns Hopkins Science Review or Studio One? This is the channel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCiT9CboW4R

Cereal Time! A man of Cape Verdean heritage talks about different cereals. I particularly enjoyed this video, which is a bit outside his usual format, where he talks about Royal Lunch Milk Crackers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u26wFpGI-kQ

These two great channels full of live performances of Carnatic music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCaqo36k2FI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShriramVasu

For Western classical music live music performances, I enjoy ADGO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AntonioDGO

And if you're looking for a more in-depth musicological approach to classical music, check out this channel on Early Music Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

Or maybe you're more into in-depth musicological analysis of video game music. There's this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bitMusicTh

More videogame music? GST makes great themed mixes showing off various types of music on classic video game systems, along with videos highlighting classic game composers. Here's a ten minute mix of 90s acid music for the SNES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdtqSNw8mec

More video game videos? Here's a channel that combines video game maps with videos of speedruns to provide a zoomed-out view of old games. Hard to explain. Here's a video of a 100% run of Bionic Commando to see it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb16BvLUuEc

Sharopolis specializes in videos highlighting games that push the technical limitations of their respective systems. Who knew Jurassic Park for the SNES was such a great technical accomplishment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sharopolis

Techmoan and LGR are great for showing off weird hardware, but Ben Minotte's Oddity Archive has been a dependable channel covering things like the early history of UHF broadcasting:

Some completely random folks playing songs on Youtube. This lady plays songs on the banjo:

Willard Losinger plays left-wing songs in the ukulele. Here he is playing Phil Ochs' "Love Me I'm A Liberal":

Gary Peters played guitar in the short-lived early '80s avant-jazz group Stinky Winkles, and now uploads videos showing him playing pedal steel guitar:

Here's a channel that does nothing but upload different recordings of Jesus Christ Superstar:

Obsolete Video is a slightly odd channel that transfers various old video recordings, some of which they upload to YouTube. A lot of the old clips on Youtube come from OVS uploads (as you can tell from the distinctive lower right corner bug).

Accented Cinema does some really cool essays on cinema, particularly Asian cinema:

Matt Baume specializes in video essays on the history of LGBT+ network television:

Finally, Hazel does these really interesting deep dives into obscure anime. I don't even watch anime, but I love the way she puts together a video.

This is perhaps the only post I'll ever make here that doesn't directly mention trans shit. Mark your calendars.

...actually, wait. No, no, wait. I forgot about the Finntastic Mr. Fox, I love this guy's videos and he has hardly any views. Got to his channel from a recent Jessie Gender video on non-binary pirates, in which Finn guested and looked extremely hot in his pirate getup:

Well, dammit those links all broke. Fuck it, I just turned it into a blog post:

https://www.alanauch.org/wtob/2022/05/24/some-youtube-channels-i-subscribe-to/

Gates Wildlife Control is a no-kill wildlife control company in Ontario, Canada - most of their channel is removing raccoon and skunk families from inside people's houses. Lately they've been visiting an abandoned house in Ontario that's become a home for turkey vultures year after year. For the last couple of weeks they've been checking in on some baby vultures since they were born.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7VWzC48O4s

I'm surprised - perturbed - that Steve1989 hasn't been mentioned. Perturbed because I don't want to blow my hard-won Ilxor credibility. Is he too mainstream? He has been profiled in the Financial Times. I don't want to post something too obvious. The point of threads such as this is to show off. I'm not going to win points by posting links to something that's too obvious. And yet the concept of his channel is decidedly niche:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtMte4yguZw

He reviews old military meals. Despite having lots of subscribers he still has a cheap-looking set. The key things in his favour are his obvious love of the topic, his sincerity, his big manly arms, the strangely comforting sight of junk food, the "binge-watching at 3am" factor, the fact that he doesn't appear to be a massive arse etc. It's like mukbang but nice. And the odd vocabulary ("prevalent" as a compliment). Is he too obvious? Not niche enough? He prompted me to finally buy some MREs from eBay and see what they were like. I remember reading about them during the first Gulf War. It took me that long to actually sate my curiosity. In summary Steve is fr fr no cap, as the kids say nowadays.

The other thing is Regular Car Reviews, which isn't niche at all. He's a gonzo car reviewer who tries to explain the sociological impact of cars from the 1970s and 1980s. It goes over my head because he talks about US car culture, but occasionally he shouts HOT DICKS for several minutes and that's funny. HOT DICKS! It's funny because he has a degree in English but he says HOT DICKS. Imagine Stephen Fry saying HOT DICKS. My reaction would be KEKW, which is another young person thing. I have no fucking idea. The kids like it though.

What else? The bloke who restores Apollo guidance computers and old Xerox Alto machines etc. The Xerox Alto demonstration is astonishing because the machine is from 1973:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H79_kKzmFs

It has the first ever implementation of Ethernet, plus a predecessor of TCP/IP, and it has a screen resolution of 800x600, which was still good in the mid-1990s. The machine comes across as a more advanced Apple Macintosh, but from 1973. And I mean yes it probably cost $20,000 a unit at a time when $20,000 could buy a house but humour me. What would you prefer to live in? A house, or the future?

What else? Synthmania / Paulo, a synthesiser enthusiast who, uniquely, makes demo tunes that are Italodisco and techno. Instead of e.g. nondescript dark ambient / analogue glitch music, which the vast majority of Youtube synthesiser people churn out because they want to be different. He's endearing because he looks like a New York Taxi driver / Mafia don, but he's a shit-hot musician who could probably churn out a SNES game sometrack in real time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWJidyE_sTg

AudioPilz, a musician from Austria who reviews "bad gear" - uploads a new video every Friday evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efmjwEu73u0

the comment that inspired this video is amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5J8j9SG3MQ

pls to explain colours of nose

this person restores old objects and makes them look brand new. not something i'd ever have the tools, knowledge, skill, or patience to do, but very satisfying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vXIA-65QNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L232PR3_5JA

if i had a channel like that, every single video would end with me not being able to put it back together, and loads of dog hair all over the place

Azerbaijan couple show you country farm life with zero talking, just cooking and rural living

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QW7YFfyu9c

niiiiiice, thank you. i've been watching the japanese versions of those recently - both street food and also "most expensive sushi in tokyo" kind of stuff. the no talking genre is the best

I got really into Japanese micro camper vans for awhile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGqMsPvjjh0

I've watched this video of a wood-fired bakery in the mountains of Japan several times - it's that good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOK3nS4t7_Y

Wait there are people that haven't seen that woman from Azerbaijan cooking? How did you survive the pandemic

My favorite "repair guy" is the guy from My Mechanics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLj2ASDWAeg

hazel ranks anime denny's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5OWj6EJdvU

lady emily goes into the history of the gorillaz' _plastic beach_ for 90 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBnh3eAQUg

Yeah I loved that hazel video. When I went to Japan and asked for restaurant recommendations ppl would always ask "family restaurant?" and now I get it.

I'm a fan of Lady Emily but 90 min on Gorillaz is a pass.

Been getting into educational ASMR in the last year or 2. The French Whisperer is the cure for insomnia, his stuff knocks me out in under 10 mins without fail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toIz0E6LYnQ

This woman reads nonfiction books, often for kids, especially cartography and Nat Geo type things. Her delivery isn’t my favorite but the material is so “my thing” I love ASMR & sciencey books about animals for kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekvOyt_R1KM

Keen On Keys combines 80s/90s consumer tech with repairing stuff and music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RjDv-0NPUQ
Unfortunately they only upload a video every 2-3 months.

Simon The Magpie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80mroZ598GE

Alfonse, who uploads music made almost entirely with the kind of 'toy' Casio/Yamaha keyboards you would see gathering dust on the shelf in a charity shop. Often the videos are made entirely with just one keyboard plus effects, like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXIpU5phKI8

The Lock Picking Lawyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSuaUok-wTY

Beardy academic invites you into his study, talks about pipes, smokes a pipe, reads you some Tolkien or CS Lewis, v soothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvFbX8k_gMc