A COLLEGE student’s online experiment convinced thousands of music fans that a music festival with a high-profile line-up of bands was due to take place near Skipton this summer.

The Craven College computing student posted an announcement of the event, dubbed Yorkshire Fields Music Festival, on social media recently and left it on for four days - with around half a million people reading the post.

His college tutor has praised the teenager's efforts and said he was "astounded" at the response.

However, not everyone was quite so impressed. One local music promoter warned that such fictitious posts could inconvenience serious music fans and damage the bands' reputations.

The teenager created the fictitious Yorkshire Fields Music Festival, stating it had an impressive line-up including Liam Gallagher, Blossoms, Arctic Monkeys, The Courteeners, The 1975, DMAs and Richard Ashcroft.

The Facebook page gave the projected dates of August 2 to 4, and the venue of Broughton, near Skipton, and said tickets would be available from March.

Within a short time of going live, people started sharing and tagging their friends - culminating in approximately 500,000 people seeing the post.

Almost 600 people posted that they were ‘interested’ in going.

The post even drew a comment from Liam Fray, frontman of The Courteeners, who posted: “Haha no chance.”

His media tutor at the college said: “I have been astounded by the response to his work, but importantly for me, I’ve also been extremely impressed by his professionalism in creating the right aesthetic and tone of communication for his target audience. He has also proceeded with great care and responsibility in his subsequent posts in the aftermath of the popularity of this post.”

To come clean, the student responded online to his original post saying: “To all those that have liked, commented and shared everything about Yorkshire Fields, I would like to announce that this festival is completely false. It is not real.

“This was a social experiment created by a college student to test how a business could be created through social media. That’s why we had no website or any extra details on any other social media sites.

“The response to this has been astounding and I could not have done it without all 500,000 people who saw, shared, liked and commented on the page.

“I’d also like to thank/apologise to those who have messaged the account with business opportunities including caterers, media teams, photographers and all other teams that would have tried to help put this festival together.

“This has been created in no way to hurt or damage any reputation of any artist or company related to the festival.

“Measures were also in place to make sure no tickets were sold, no money has been taken and no trading has been involved.”

Some of the comments his page received included:

* “Please tell me this isn’t fake!”

* “OMG I wanna go to this so bad! Liam Gallagher, Arctic monkeys, Milky Chance, Hobo Johnson.... omggggg.”

* “I want this to be real but surely Arctic Monkeys would be higher up (the listings).”

One person who seemed to have been taken in added: “Why is Richard Ashcroft so far down the line-up? Is it the real RC?”

Another stated after the teenager announced the experiment: “Knew it was fake as soon as he put Ashcroft at the bottom.”

Another was not impressed with the post: “Most pathetic experiment ever.... Bet your (sic) well buzzing with all those likes for your fake festival and how your so called experiment went. Embarrassing lad.”

Another responder saw through the fake post, musing: “I went last year; George Michael, Prince and Amy Winehouse headlined.”

Saby Khan, music promoter at Keighley-based Goodfellaz Entertainment and Media, warned that such pranks could easily backfire.

He told the Craven Herald: “Genuine festival-goers save up up to have a great time, listen to live music, attend music workshops and have fun with friends and family.

“This sort of prank puts doubts in people’s minds on future events. It can also have a negative impact on the artist mentioned as it can effect the credibility and honesty of the performer.

"I would recommend people check with the artists’ social media links to comfirm they are performing at an event.”