“It’s staggering the amount of money you’re offered,” he says, “but music is more important than selling mashed potatoes or a dodgy jacket made in the Philippines.”Some of the reasons for the British decline in America will be featured in next month’s British Council report, commissioned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, regarding the setting up of a UK Music Office. The report’s author is Doug D’Arcy, former president of Chrysalis Records.Though the report acknowledges the dramatic loss of the UK’s market share in the US since the 1980s has been impacted by the development of certain musical genres (notably rap, hip-hop and R&B) in which the UK has found it hard to compete, it cites a couple of main reasons for the decline:First, the trading conditions for marketing UK musical exports within the US have become less favourable over recent years. Though the US may be famed for its commitment to open markets, the world’s most lucrative music market is also one of the most closed. In 2000, some 92 per cent of the US recorded market was accounted for by sales of local acts, with only Pakistan registering a higher share of homegrown music in its national charts. (But there are high levels of piracy of western music in Pakistan, so the US is easily the most nationalist music market in the world.)Second, UK artists, managers, labels and publishers face escalating marketing costs, an increasingly consolidated and fragmented radio market and more incentives for American-controlled companies to prioritise their own artists and writers.

With distribution deals harder to find, UK labels have been tempted to opt for short-term benefits of licensing, to the detriment of sustainable business success.It might be unwise to exaggerate the slump as part of a long-term trend. Last year saw a dramatic transformation in British fortunes in the US. British artists had an 8.8 per cent share of Billboard’s top 100 albums over the year, compared to 1.7 per cent in 2000 and just 0.2 per cent in 1999, an all-time low.Stars such as Sade – who now barely causes a ripple in Britain – and Dido were among artists who had big-selling albums in America in 2001 But for American success look well beyond rock. One of the most sought-after new stars in the US is the Welsh teenage diva Charlotte Church. She spearheaded the “classical crossover” invasion of America,and the US appears to have been fascinated by the concept of classically trained singers presented as pop stars and performing a range of material from operatic to middle-of-the-road and pop. Russell Watson, Bond and Sarah Brightman are others who did well last year.Mr D’Arcy said yesterday: “There are musical reasons why there are problems.

Rap and R&B are big in America and we don’t do them particularly well But we also need a structure there. From the Sixties onwards I went to America, opened offices and had staff there That doesn’t happen any more So there is a need for a British music embassy. Artists who do well there like David Gray, Dido and Radiohead have good support mechanisms. Dido had an American management company, Network, she toured, she built a fanbase.