I haven't discovered any broad social innovation 'gold nuggets' to share here. Instead I feel value in sharing a few points of reflection I have come across in my market research. They may be a bit hard to digest but I hope my thought process could be seen as a 'mini-case study'

First, I came across a website that offers one of my marketable service points, an anti-theft tool

http://imidb.org/

They allow users in input information at their own will to register their instrument and provide details for it on the website. Additionally you can sell instruments on the website and it has vowed on its homepage to always be free. From there you can claim if it is stolen and flag it and alert authorities and you can sell instruments. One point of innovation I have found from this format is this format still has limited credibility. The database of instruments and their reliability is only as truthful as the reporters are, so in a way credibility isn't established much further than the status quo. In my reflection though, there is only so much more credibility in the data provided from receipts of past service records. So officially it would be sincerely hard to prove perfectly credible data, as only past services that were done commercially would be track able from a primary source.

Second I found a website that is tackling a specified market of musical instruments similar to my approach. Axe Fax

http://www.axefax.com/index.php

They offer anti theft protection in form of micro chips with easy install, which is viable for guitars. Additionally guitars can be frequently stolen so this service is pretty smart and they have all the products needed for protection for sale by them. They are the sole distributors of all this technology so they have dominated the guitar market. Once again a short finding I see is that they take data input from musicians themselves. That plays along the status quo exactly like instrument dealing works, word of mouth. They can seem credible, protecting the little guy, at a fair price but still data input is left up to narration from people.

One thing I think neither website tackle are valuation and credibility. The format very close to my original idea, especially on low budget, yet I do not foresee them going anywhere fast.

Still working on the social impact factor I think a possible easy target populations are: young talented poor musicians (I dare say that is most of them :) ) trying to start their major education or professional career and providing pertinent information to guide them to the best valued, best matching instrument with history reports and networking ( late high school and early college aged). Often a difficulty is connecting person A to seller B.