A team of audio archivists from the Live Music Archive seized on a 2019 WBEZ feature about Chicago taper Aadam Jacobs and began converting his three‑decade‑spanning tape vault into digital form. By fall 2024 they had collected the first 120 reels, launching a effort to preserve rare local gigs and early sets from acts such as Nirvana, Hüsker Dü and Phish.

With 10,000+ recordings on hand, the naive estimate of ten shows per day implied a decade‑long marathon. Volunteers reorganized the pipeline into five specialist stations—cataloging, transfer, metadata prep, editing/mastering, and final review—so that a single show can move from reel to archive in a matter of hours. The new line‑up targets 25‑30 shows daily, trimming the timeline to roughly two years.

In the first year the team uploaded 1,500+ shows, drawing more than 133,000 streams and sparking fresh conversations among fans of forgotten bands like Scruffy the Cat. Contributions now flow from nine cities across North America and Europe, and the archive aims for 8,000 uploaded performances and a million visitors by next summer. The collection is already public and growing daily.