The voice of the American music industry spoke in Augusta this week, and it was deep.

John “Bowzer” Bauman, low man on the greaser totem Sha Na Na, made a pitch to the Legislature’s Business, Research and Economic Development Committee about LD 686, the Truth In Music Advertising Act.

Bauman is on a quest to prevent artists from having their identities co-opted by impostors or unsavory promoters, who advertise the Coasters or Drifters without permission from those who made the group famous.

“The public is duped,” said Bauman, who serenaded the Maine lawmakers impaneled with deciding LD 686. While the intent behind the bill, sponsored by Lewiston representative Elaine Makas, is laudable, we fear putting the state into the business of regulating the music industry.

The business of music, as anyone with the buds of an mp3 player in their ears knows, is changing: compact disc sales are bottoming against digital competitors, according to Nielsen data. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal said some now consider CDs throwaway marketing tools, rather than revenue sources, for artists.

Going platinum, it seems, will soon be counted in downloads, not record sales.

Yet despite best efforts by the Recording Industry Association of America, to preserve the industry in the digital age, pirated music is still traded at a rate of one billion songs per month, the Journal said.

(Now the University of Maine system has been put on notice by the RIAA. The RIAA has identified 27 persons who illegally downloaded music on UMaine computers.)

Some believe the music industry is flailing against a tough opponent – changing consumer preferences – and should spend time finding a market solution to its woes, rather than pushing litigation, or further legislation. The same could be said for LD 686: if the problem is duped consumers, as Bauman says, a market response could solve it.

Just as the disruption of digital innovation – legal and illegal – remains the music industry’s to resolve.

Government has done its part. Nine years ago, Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which addressed the technological circumventions to traditional copyright laws.

It seems misleading music advertising could be fought with existing trademark rules, or a vigorous industry-sponsored education campaign, not more laws.

Consumers should be warned by government of health and safety risks, like lung cancer from tobacco, or the dangers from of heavy machine operation after consuming cold medicine.

Does government need to warn about – or seek financial penalties from the purveyors – of second-rate renditions of “Under the Boardwalk?” Probably not.

“Bowzer” is right, though: Consumers are being duped.

This injustice, however, might be best for the market, not the government, to remedy.