David Guetta's success is based on a simple idea: combine the dominant European and American ideas of pop, and clean up worldwide. In practice, that means putting hip-hop and R&B vocals over hands-aloft club beats. As happens with most obvious ideas, an awful lot of other people are doing it, too – colossal Eurodance beats are the foundation of Stargate's production desk success, and Dr Luke's too. But Guetta is the brand leader – his fingerprints were on the Black Eyed Peas' ubiquitous I Gotta Feeling, and he's had four No 1s under his own name. As his sales and profile rise, he's traded up his original vocal collaborators – such as gospel singer Chris Willis, still the touring voice of the Guetta sound – for an altogether glitzier lineup. Nothing But the Beat features Nicki Minaj, Ludacris, Akon, Snoop Dogg and Jessie J, all trying to get to grips with his music's endless, gleaming brashness. There may not be a King of Pop right now, but Guetta can lay reasonable claim to be its Managing Director.

His heart, though, is in logistics – getting things to move. Guetta stresses that he still thinks like a DJ, and his interviews are peppered with references to "the community" – the world of club music he came up in. He's even hinted that he's a kind of Trojan horse for dance music in the world outside this community, citing a Billboard cover proclaiming him "the man who's changing the face of American music". In Britain, though, club music and the pop charts are long integrated, and Guetta's revolutionary credentials don't stand much scrutiny.

Making pop music with your DJ head on turns out to mean, in Guetta's case, preferring not to countenance any kind of track that isn't a thumping, big-room moment. Everything on this album's first disc could be a single – which is marvellous, until it turns out to be the same single. Guetta's songwriting team is great at luring you in with intros that promise something a little different – rock, on the Jessie J showcase Repeat, or soulful pop, on Akon's Crank It Up – but the lure of the steamroller beat is too strong every time.

Isn't that an unfair criticism? After all, pop history is full of producers who've seized a moment by sticking to a formula. Neither Stock, Aitken and Waterman nor Chinn and Chapman were known for experimental streaks – why should we expect any more of Guetta? His best tracks before now – such as the Kelly Rowland-fronted When Love Takes Over – succeeded by being so undeniably catchy that the crowd-baiting production seemed only right. But now some of his ideas are looking whiskery, particularly in a chartscape where everyone is doing this kind of thing. Crank It Up borrows ideas from Kelis's triumphant Acapella, which was one of Guetta's. Night of Your Life rubs shoulders with Rihanna's Only Girl (in the World), which wasn't.

Individual Guetta songs aren't really differentiated by lyric or mood – everyone's in the club all the time, the boys are on the prowl, the girls are defiant and tough-talking – so the texture of the featured voices on Nothing But the Beat does a lot of work. As a whole the album's curiously reminiscent of mashup darling Girl Talk – it's a compendium of rap hooks freed of all context in the name of moving a crowd.

The best moments, inevitably, come from singers who are recognisable and exciting even when they're saying nothing. Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne aren't contributing career-best verses, but their lively, idiosyncratic voices play off well against all the polished noise. Sia, on Titanium, handles the album's best hook well, but Snoop Dogg's more laidback approach is overwhelmed. As for Timbaland, his sullen, underpowered flow makes I Just Wanna Fuck exactly as charming as its title promises.

The first disc of Nothing But the Beat will keep the hits rolling: its second part seems a more intriguing proposition, a collection of instrumental tracks that gives Guetta the chance to cut free of guest stars and make his own statement. It's fidgety, busy, DayGlo house music – the touchstone seems to be the funny, frantic, solo-heavy tracks Daft Punk were making a decade or so ago. Individual cuts – such as the Afrojack collaboration Lunar – have a fizz and agility the vocal album lacks, but as a whole it's sadly just as exhausting.

Guetta's humility, and his identification with the DJ booth over the spotlight, are callbacks to an era of dance music when even its biggest names were frequently dubbed "faceless". That works fine in his beloved club community – but Guetta's music has become the dominant sound of pop, and in that context its interchangeable efficiency is turning sour. Nothing But the Beat may sound like a one-man hit parade, but it also takes its title far too literally.