I must have passed through the doors of Nice’n’Sleazy, the grungy Glasgow rock dive, at least 100 times in my life. Today, however, is the first time I have stopped to savour its shabby charms by day.

It reeks of stale beer and the peeling green wallpaper is patently two decades out of date, but its jukebox is one of the best in Glasgow. Here at weekends it’s standing room only, the bottles of lager are lukewarm and the noise can be deafening. Welcome to the place where Glasgow’s up-and-coming bands take their first steps towards stardom.

I’m being told all this via my iPod. The voice that informs me adds it is one of the “funkiest and most popular” music venues in Glasgow. Inside these hallowed walls “singers are practically hugged by their adoring crowds”. Apparently it’s a favourite hang out of Alan Woodward of the Delgados and the entire cast of Arab Strap. And, my guide omits to mention, me.

The voice belongs to Jim Gellatly, the Glasgow DJ and tour guide to the world’s first city iTour. This unquestionably cutting-edge tourist aid is essentially an indie kid version of the headphones and four-language sightseeing guide on offer in any big city. The difference is that this concentrates on Glasgow’s music landmarks and is downloaded from the internet straight into your iPod.

It is aimed at a digitally shrewd and NME-savvy crowd, the kind of hip young street tripper who knows his Franz Ferdinands from his Belle and Sebastians. It is sightseeing for the art-punk generation.

The iTour is the brainchild of Sam Chapnick, a New York music producer, who was commissioned to develop the tour of Glasgow by Tennents Lager. Several cities are expected to follow Glasgow’s example, including Manchester and New York.

“This is what the internet is for,” says Rob Bruce, Tennents’ PR manager, “using technology to create a global first that will reach a worldwide audience. We wanted to do something to promote the music scene in Glasgow, that tapped into the MP3 and iPod craze to encourage more visitors to the city and, in turn, to Scotland.”

The trip begins in the Victorian splendour of George Square and comes full circle to the 13th Note in King Street, the one-time workplace of Alex Kapranos, lead singer of Franz Ferdinand, who used to book bands for the venue.

Unsurprisingly, the drainpiped four feature heavily in the tour — one of our first stops is Glasgow School of Art, where drummer Paul Thomson earned extra pennies by posing nude for fine art students.

Whether Bob Hardy, the bassist, was in the class at the time has yet to be disclosed, but the band went on to play their first gig there and chose the school as the venue for their after-show party following their homecoming gig at the Barras last October.

The tour then crosses the M8 into the west end, home of Cava recording studios, where Belle and Sebastian laid down their award-winning albums Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant and If You’re Feeling Sinister. Close by is Tchai-Ovna, the endearingly bohemian tea house where some of Glasgow’s more refined pop stars have penned tunes over a cup of raspberry tea.

As you wander the streets, the iPod pipes in a merry stream of interviews and commentary from a number of Glasgow’s pop stars elect, including Roddy Campbell from the blues rockers Dead Fly Buchowski and Ian Crawford from Raising Cain.

The informative bits are interspersed with essentially useless trivia. Listeners will learn that Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian once donated all his girlfriend’s underwear to the Oxfam shop on Byres Road.

This renders the tour painstakingly comprehensive — perhaps to ensure nobody important is left out — so the full rundown is time- consuming. I took the whistle-stop version and after a two-hour walk in the drizzle found myself lingering longer at every spot with a roof and a menu. If taken at too late an hour, the iTour could — perish the thought — turn into a pub crawl.

At times, however, it deviates into worryingly thin territory. Quite why we need to know that Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody has broken the neck of his Fender Telecaster three times and had it repaired at Jimmy Egypt’s guitar repair shop in Kelvinbridge, is something of a puzzle.

The well-worn story of Badly Drawn Boy’s never-ending set at the Queen Margaret Union at Glasgow University hardly suggests there is a wealth of lore from which to draw.

But the iTour has already found some fans. While I stand below the statue of the Duke of Wellington, that once bore a traffic cone as a crown thanks to a student prankster, I notice a fellow iPod user peering intently at the statue’s now coneless head. It turns out he, too, is taking the tour.

“I think it has given me a new appreciation for some of the streets and places I walk past,” says my new companion, JC Murray.

Tempted to the city by its rich musical reputation, he moved to Glasgow from Belfast to study Russian literature and play bass and harmonica in a rock band.

“I think anyone who is new to the city and interested in the music scene would be delighted to get a heads-up on some of the history,” he says. “You want to know silly little details like where Franz Ferdinand used to hang out or where Belle and Sebastian recorded their first album, because these are the things that make it all seem real.”

As the tour nears an end, I find myself in the vegan-chic (yes, really) cafe bar Mono. Here a group of scruffy young men are sound-checking for a gig, while in the adjacent record shop, Monorail, Stephen Pastel of the Pastels chats with a customer. There is an undeniable buzz in the air. Browsing the Glasgow gig guide, I’m struck by the wealth of live music in nearly every venue in the city.

But, as Gellatly helpfully reminds me, after all that walking, all I really want is a nice cold beer.

Times Recommends

• Swine flu vaccine for all as drug rushed through
• Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby
• BBC jets out stars to tout for prizes