Are Coldplay and Justin Bieber's fan-made music videos just cheap marketing ploys?

Not to resort to hyperbole or anything, but the worst music marketing ploy ever devised must be the fan-made music promo. Along with the lyric video, it’s a modern phenomenon, a half-cynical and wholly transparent way of “giving back to the fans” by getting them to film themselves dancing or making some delicate paper creation and then stitching those clips together for a music video the band doesn’t have to get out of bed and into makeup for. Am I talking about Coldplay right now? Yes, Coldplay, I am talking about you. The world’s biggest touring band, worth an estimated £385m, recently asked their fans to collaborate with them on the exceptionally on-the-cheap video for Amazing Day, and frankly I’ve had enough of it.

Where did all this nonsense start? Hard to say exactly, but an accusatory finger can be jabbed at niche sex term-turned-alt-rock trio Feeder, whose 2001 video for Just A Day was compiled from grainy VHS reels of fans moshing and earnestly lip-synching in their bedrooms. It wasn’t until the early YouTube era, though – when everyone got a free webcam in their desktop PC deal from Currys and figured out how to use it – that this trend really took hold. Barenaked Ladies’ 2006 single Sound Of Your Voice harnessed the star power of early YouTube celebrities (remember Numa Numa Man? Be thankful we have Zoella instead). Weezer repeated the same trick in 2008 with Tay Zonday and Pork And Beans, but that seemed to be the moment everyone realised this idea was terrible and scrapped it for a bit.

Around 2015, however, the fan-collab music video bounced back with a new weapon: the smartphone. Blur made all their fortysomething fans figure out how to do video on their iPhones for I Broadcast. Bieber’s Where Are U Now video was made using scribbled fan art. Ed Sheeran’s fan-made alternative for 2014’s Thinking Out Loud managed to be twee-er than the official video of him ballroom dancing. Even Radiohead – Radiohead! – had fans submit “‘vignettes” for an Instagram campaign for A Moon Shaped Pool.

It’s not just that these videos are so lo-fi as to be embarrassing. There is a certain hypocrisy in artists who complain about streaming rights and anything else that wicks money away from them then turning around and asking their followers – under the guise of “this is for you!” – to make the music videos for free. Let’s draw a line under it with Coldplay and say: listen, we’ve had some fun, we’ve done some real fifth-single-off-the-album-really-can’t-be-bothered-now filler, and now we’re done. Give Supersonic director Mat Whitecross a multimillion-pound budget and bring back the CGI monkeys.