On the way to meet Radiohead producer and all-round musical wizard Nigel Godrich, I'm hit with a pang of anxiety: can I identify him in a crowd? For all of his incredible feats – he's arguably this generation's George Martin – Godrich isn't one for standing out. A blokeish 42-year-old with a smattering of hair, he often dresses as if transported from a Come Dine With Me omnibus. Yet, sat at a cafe table in the middle of Covent Garden in London, I spot him immediately, loitering behind a sea of leering football fans and doddering tourists. Maybe it's that glint in his eyes; the secrets those eyes withhold.

Best known for being at the helm of every Radiohead album since OK Computer – not to mention his production work on Beck, REM, Paul McCartney and Pavement albums – Godrich has recently been branching out: recording and performing with Atoms For Peace (his supergroup featuring Thom Yorke and Flea), as well as with the more low-key trio Ultraista, his beat-heavy chillwave outfit that has have a new remix album due next month. Yet Godrich's name has recently been making headlines for other reasons.

First came the touching advice video he made with Thom Yorke for the website Rookie Mag, where the pair answered questions sent in by teenage girls. "I've watched it back once and its a bit cringe-making," admits Godrich. "But it's very real what you're seeing – that's what Thom is like so it's lovely that people get to see that. He's great at giving advice in the context of work, too – he gives me advice."

Second, and on a somewhat bigger scale, Godrich caused online waves when he unwittingly became the poster boy for an anti-Spotify campaign. It transpires that Godrich didn't realise what he was starting when he removed Ultraista and Atoms For Peace's albums from Spotify and told his followers that "new artists get paid fuck all with this model".

What he thought were a few posts on Twitter soon became a machete to a hornet's nest: for every comment celebrating the fact that Godrich was breaking the silence on what many had accepted as the new structure of the modern music industry, there were a hundred more along the lines of: "It just sounds like a successful artist whining." The Guardian published a blog responding to Godrich's tirade that argued that artists can still earn a healthy living via TV syncs and radio play in 2013. Just as I bring up this particular piece, Godrich cuts me off mid-sentence: "The guy [who wrote that piece] was smoking crack if he thinks you can get a fucking commercial for £400,000. Maybe if you're Jay-Z. Maybe if you're one of five people. But the point is all of those things he was pointing out are now impossible to get because there's literally thousands of people competing for the same thing. It's gone. And pieces like that really don't help."

Godrich is great company and offers some truly fantastic name-drops (apparently Paul McCartney only "eats in the morning and then at dinner, but he doesn't eat lunch. He just eats nuts and berries and stuff"). But it is obvious that he also has a lot of pent-up frustration. He wants to get a few things off his chest during our two hours together. He says that he is in a position of privilege, given that Radiohead albums alone have sold in excess of 30m copies, and this gives him leverage to encourage debate about Spotify's accounting system and his belief that that shareholders benefit more from the service than new artists.

"I think it's very of the time and it shows a feeling in society. Everybody is very greedy. And all this is about is the emergence of a universal access to music, which I think is an amazing thing. I'm not a dinosaur, I know what streaming is, I know how it works more than anybody I've met. And believe me I've done an awful lot of research about it the last few weeks," he says. "What we're prepared to accept, and what could become the norm, is trying to be cemented here. Some people have been greedy and it doesn't have to be [like that]."

Godrich is not against the concept of streaming, he simply views current models as a land grab being carried out by "the same people who sold you your record collection again for £20 on CD" (ie major labels who have bought up shares in services such as Spotify).

Godrich also points out that artists such as The Black Keys and Adele – two bestselling artists – do not stream their albums on Spotify. "But Spotify will tell you that if you don't put your albums on, then your albums won't sell," he says. "They're being divisive. These people are very clever. They're cleverer than me and there's more of them than me. And they have a lot more money and time than me. I'm not claiming to have an answer or that I'm going to start my own streaming [service]. Just come up with something better and it will work better for you in the long term. It can be amazing. It can be a genuine technical revolution that allows people to access everything."

There's a certain defiance to Godrich. Growing up in London, with folk musician parents, he rebelled against their desires for him to play the violin and began to discover pop by himself. As a teen he spent years stoned on Hampstead Heath ("Someone once made a pipe out of a tree. You could smoke from the tree!") and immersed himself in music.

Studying at the School of Audio Engineering, at 17 he began interning in studios before scoring a job at Rak in St John's Wood. There he met producer John Leckie who was starting work on an album called The Bends by Radiohead. After engineering some of the band's early tracks, Godrich's career, and Radiohead's trajectory, changed dramatically with the band's third album OK Computer.

"OK Computer was such a big thing for me because I was given power for the first time," he says. "Some of these incredibly intelligent and insightful people said 'do what you want' to me so I worked my arse off for them and together we did something that represents where we all were at the time. And it stuck for some reason. People got it, so that changed my life." He still describes the band as his "best friends" and adds: "I'm incredibly fortunate. Its all about who you end up with. It's luck. The harder I work the luckier I get."

Godrich is certainly relishing his many musical guises; from toiling through the night on Ultraista material to Atoms For Peace's rather more relaxed working methods. "Before we go onstage it's like a frigging yoga class!" he says. "I'm like, this isn't very rock'n'roll – there are people standing on their heads!"

Godrich says that he skips these rituals but maybe he should consider trying out some meditation. Within that normal-looking head of his lies a remarkable mind – one that could probably do with a little peace.



Ultraísta Remixes will be released on 12-inch vinyl and digital formats in the UK by I Am Fortified on September 2nd (digital) & 3rd (physical)