Producer Nick Davis speculates on how British music could recapture some of the magic he feels it's lost...

I make my living as a record producer, and I love all types and styles of music. This is why I feel so sad when I see the UK's music scene becoming so narrow and full of in-fighting. I don't want to moan, but I really believe that it is time we started working together to introduce a bit of variety into the music industry — and in my opinion the best way to do that is to fight for another national FM music station as a competitor to Radio One.

At the moment, Radio One has it too easy. It's all very well to sit back and say you are the best, but if you have no real competition, the public has nothing to judge you by. Having someone like Simon Bates going potty about a Rolf Harris record — which he did and it got into the charts because of him — doesn't do anyone any favours.

But the point is that the government is never going to take requests for another national FM radio station seriously until the different factions within the music industry stop fighting amongst themselves. It's all very well having people who like dance music saying dance is the best thing and everything else is rubbish while people who like rock say rock is best and everything else is crap, but what we have to realise is that this kind of attitude is really destructive, because there is no reason why all these elements can't co-exist. If we stopped the in-fighting and concentrated instead on promoting all types of music, we might get somewhere.

As a nation, our music is becoming less and less influential and I think radio has a lot to answer for. The record companies have pandered to the radio stations for too long and have allowed them to become too powerful. I'm often asked to make a perfectly good five-minute track into something that runs for less than four minutes because the record companies know that if they submit a longer track to Radio One it won't get played, no matter how good it is. To me, this seems ridiculous. Instead of doing everything the radio stations demand, record companies should be brave enough to say, look, this is the record and that's the way it stays, rather than trying to fit the product into the narrow constraints demanded by the radio stations.

The answer must lie in more competition. Virgin has helped but it suffers from appalling sound quality because it is on AM not FM. The music Virgin plays is more interesting and adult-orientated at least, but hearing it on AM spoils the effect.

I think there is also a secondary problem, which is that people don't really listen to music any more — instead they use it as a backdrop for something else. For example, a big hit will often come out of a film soundtrack or, in the case of dance hits, it will come out of the club scene. That's fine, and I have no problems with dance music or film soundtrack hits, but if that is the only way in which we generate music, the UK will eventually become even more unimportant than it already is. It makes me very sad to hear what other nations say about our music.

In the past, people in Europe and the US used to look at the UK and say they were excited about the new things that were happening here. But now they're not excited at all — in fact, they think we're a bit of a joke because there are so few good bands coming out of Britain. Even on the dance side, much of the really innovative music is coming from Germany and the rest of Europe because the UK isn't adventurous enough to push out the boundaries.

And nor are we creating the sort of heroes and superstars that people really want to see. Bands don't have the mystique they used to have, and as a result the public don't see them as anything special. They have lost some of their magic because the accountant mentality at record companies has turned music into a product, to be shifted in the same way that McDonalds shifts hamburgers.

What would help is if we could get more bands playing live in small venues. In Britain there are very few small venues that are any good, so most people only see bands in big stadium or arena environments. If you contrast that with the situation in America, where there are thousands of bars in which you can listen to live music, you begin to see why our music industry is suffering from such a lack of variety. In the US, going to see a band is something very casual and everyone does it. But over here, live music has become too inaccessible. You can go to a club and dance, which is great, but why shouldn't it be just as easy to go and hear a band play live?

Maybe this is an area where young bands can help themselves by encouraging their local pubs and bars to let them play live. Why not? It would be good for the band, good for the bar and good for the public. Seeing a live band or hearing an album that really inspires you is what music is all about.

If music is to have magic, it must have an emotional impact. But if we continue to compromise our musicians and not allow them the freedom to express themselves as they want to, we will never recapture that magic.

Nick Davis's production credits include Genesis, XTC, Velvet Underground, Marillion, A-ha, Mike and the Mechanics and Fuzzbox.