This month, producer Nigel Lowis hits out at short-termism in the UK record industry.

In recent years, changes in the music industry have resulted in changes in the way A&R people work. It seems to me that many of them, particularly those fairly new to the business, are now more interested in short term profits than in looking at long term artist development.

A&R means artist and repertoire, so their job should be about finding an artist and then finding the right material for that artist, either by enabling artists to write or by putting them in touch with an appropriate songwriter. But that doesn't seem to happen any more. Instead, an A&R person will spot a band that has one potential hit song and sign the band on the strength of just that one song. Then, for an outlay of between £3,000 and £10,000, the song will be recorded and remixed by whoever is flavour of the month before being released. With a bit of luck, it will chart and if it does, the record company will have to spend another £10,000 scrambling around for a follow-up in order to cash in on this initial success.

In this scenario, the second single is not well thought out and has no long term plan behind it — it's just thrown together in the hope that it will have a 'latch-on' effect. It may well chart, and then the record company starts thinking about a budget album to cash in on the initial hit. This is an incredibly short-sighted way of working because all you get is one big hit, a minor hit and then, with the third single, no hit at all. By the time the album is released, no one buys it because they already own the two best tracks on it.

Making an investment of £3,000 and getting a return of £7,000 may look great on the balance sheets, and if you manage that 10 times a year (£70,000) then it's easy to assume you're doing your job very well indeed. But in fact, all you have earned the company is about £40,000, if you take off the £30,000 it cost to record those 10 singles. If the company looks towards the future and spends £250,000 recording a really great album, then the returns worldwide could run into millions. For that reason alone, record companies should spend more on development rather than being seduced by quick returns. What A&R people should actually do is take the artist with one potentially good track and team him or her up with a good production company. There may be a lot of untapped talent there, because what originally aroused interest is often just the tip of the iceberg.

I know this works because that's exactly what happened with Dina Carroll. We're both signed to First Avenue Management, and we started working together after she sang on Quartz's cover of Carole King's 'It's Too Late'. That charted and the record company needed a follow-up; I was called in to help craft the next song. Over three or four days we tried out various songs, and the chemistry between us really clicked. But at that point, she didn't even have a deal because Phonogram had signed Quartz, not Dina, and although she was in demand as a funky vocalist, very few people were knocking on First Avenue's door to sign her as a long-term artist.

However, First Avenue and the production team saw her potential as the next Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey. She was lucky to have a management company that believes in artist development and had the foresight to stick it out because they felt that if a single was a good record, then its impact would last long enough for the artist to find the right producer and make a great follow up.

Luckily A&M, who signed her, had the same foresight. No one was blinded by any big figures or misconceptions. We just wanted to make a really classy album and A&M was prepared to spend money to do so. They locked into every idea we had and backed up our efforts by putting weight behind them. That should be the way record companies operate and Dina is living proof of the effectiveness of that philosophy. It took over two years for us to reach this stage but we reckon that Dina's first album will be double platinum by Christmas. It cost over £200,000 to record, so it wasn't cheap, but the returns are huge and the original investment in terms of money and time has paid off.

It's easy for a young band to be seduced by the prospect of a hit single, but for a record company £3,000 is little more than a punt. If that first single isn't dropped the right way, there won't be a second single, let alone an album: young bands should remember that. It would be far better if the money was spent on helping them to write a few songs towards an album so that the company has a package mapped out before it launches anything. The long-term marketing would be properly in place and that young artist would be in a far better position to make money for the company.

One thing I've learned is that a team effort very rarely fails. You have to trust the team and all bat together rather than letting egos get in the way; once the team starts pulling together, everyone gets excited and the most incredible buzz goes right through the company. I really believe that record companies should go in for fewer artists, but more development. It's not particularly patriotic, but it's sad from a British industry point of view that these days we have so few major artists who we can export to the rest of the world.

In addition to Dina Carroll, Nigel Lowis has worked with Yazz, Kym Mazelle, Real McCoys and the Soul City Orchestra. Most recently, he has been working with Burt Bacharach in Los Angeles.