Convergence Culture:Online auction houses are reviving the spirit of the ancient marketplaces, writes Haydn Shaughnessy

The growth of the online auction site eBay is, according to the American researcher Daniel Nissanoff, responsible for dramatic changes in the way we buy and sell goods.

From the perspective of pure culture one of its most surprising effects is to encourage people to try out musical instruments and be more active in the purchase of recorded film and other cultural artefacts. How come? The reason, according to Nissanoff, is that the presence of auction sites means you can take a chance on new interests. Do you want to buy a good guitar when you don't know how to play? That's a crazy use of money, unless you already have a musical background or you know you're the kind of person who will persist with a new ambition. On the other hand, if you could dispose of the guitar on eBay as soon as you discovered how thick your fingers were, that means you can take a low-risk approach to improving your musical education.

Is there any evidence? Guitar-sales figures for Ireland are hard to come by, but over in the UK a population of 60 million people now buys one million new guitars a year. Sales of guitars there doubled between 1999 and the end of 2004, which just about coincides with the point where eBay began making a significant impact on the auction world. In 1999 eBay purchased a new online payments system to help smooth its sales process, but it was also the time when the internet began to make an impression on the general public.

While straight statistics on guitar sales are hard to find in Ireland, we are lucky to have the prospect of one of the few specialist guitar-sales auction websites, which is based in Kilkenny. DbTwang.com, which is due to launch in late April-early May, is being developed by local entrepreneurs Keith Bohanna and Fintan Blake Kelly and the site will allow guitar collectors worldwide to auction quality guitars.

Blake Kelly points out that modern guitars, namely those made in the past 20 years, are generally of a far lower quality than the classic guitar, but the expansion of interest in guitar ownership is driving a vibrant secondary market in quality guitars.

"The availability of quality guitars is almost entirely due to the internet," says Blake Kelly. He claims that 20 years ago the main mechanism for accessing a quality Gibson or Fender was through people returning from the US.

"What eBay has done," he continues, "is create a global information source on these instruments. It's created a market in quality guitars." It's also made it possible to own a variety of instruments, knowing that the capital tied up in them can quickly be returned to cash. In other words, eBay and similar sites have brought liquidity to a new range of cultural objects.

The internet is helping people to find their way into music through informal education. Budding guitarists can fire up the video site YouTube and watch their peers demonstrating a range of songs and styles, replicating the musical peer culture that Blake Kelly says has dropped off in the physical world.

The rise in guitar sales might also be attributed to a variety of factors, with fashion a strong candidate.

Here's a little supportive evidence for Nissanoff's theory - unsurprisingly, piano sales do not mirror the increase in guitar sales. Where the data is available piano sales appear to be about level globally.

Auctioning a piano online is feasible, but delivering it is both expensive and fraught with risk. The fact that not all musical instruments have enjoyed the success of the guitar suggests that Nissanoff might be right about eBay's effect.

In general, the importance of auctions to popular culture has been overlooked. In Germany and Sweden researchers have found that auctions played a pivotal role on social interaction in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Many household goods were regularly auctioned. Not only was the auction a means of setting a value on commonly owned goods, it was also where people met and they demonstrated that secondary markets were an important way of life. We may be on our way back to setting prices socially and to depending on secondary markets.

That apart, a welcome effect of the internet is to raise the musical awareness of young people. In a slightly more esoteric way it is also playing a role in promoting Irish contemporary classical compositions across the world.

The Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin's Temple Bar reports that sales of sheet music of contemporary Irish composers are enjoying a welcome increase, now that they can be accessed online. Irish culture has an ever-expanding audience. What are the chances of a dbTwang.com for the violin, flute and trombone?

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Words in Your Ear

dbTwang -Irish-based site (www.dbtwang.com) for auctioning quality guitars

eBay -the world's largest auction-house website (www.ebay.ie)

Creating liquidity -making it possible to realise cash value from non-cash assets

Secondary markets -markets where used goods are deemed to be of continuing value