Exploring the Home of the Blues, the Chicago Blues Audio Tour narrated by Chicago-local Buddy Guy has found an astonishing audience in just six months. The podcast has been downloaded more than 97,000 times and is currently averaging over 1,000 downloads per day. The free, 50-minute tour combines an interactive map, tour stop directions, archival photos, video, music clips, and interviews – a true multimedia experience unlike anything else available.

Listeners are able to follow the tour either by downloading to a portable media player or by virtually experiencing Chicago on a home computer. Available in Mandarin Chinese, English, German, Japanese, and Spanish, the tour is able to reach international visitors and devotees of Chicago Blues wherever they are.

The podcast was featured on the front page of iTunes, the most popular repository for podcasts in the world. The tour was also awarded a 2007 MUSE Award from the American Association of Museums recognizing outstanding achievement in museum media. According to the judges, “while [the tour] would offer an evocative introduction to a visitor on the streets of Chicago, it is strong enough to be educational and engaging no matter where the listener may be.”

As Buddy Guy explains about Chicago, “This is the place where people just like myself came from the South to create new lives and a new kind of music. The generation just before mine came up here playing folk music. But soon they traded in their acoustic guitars for electric instruments. And when they plugged them in, they created a new, urban sound, that we call Chicago Blues.”