Organisers of Bingley Music Live have withdrawn from future promotions with a talent contest which bills itself as the “UK’s largest competition for original music” after it emerged it was being investigated by advertising watchdogs.

Festival manager Andrew Wood said said it would not continue a promotional partnership with Live and Unsigned after this year’s festival in Myrtle Park from August 31 until September 2.

An Advertising Standards Agency spokesman confirmed that the watchdog was investigating a complaint about Live and Unsigned following complaints over false advertising.

Mr Wood said: “We have made a decision that we are going to withdraw from future promotional opportunities with Live and Unsigned. That is due to the pressure locally and to restore some faith in the local music scene.”

Bingley Music Live entered into an agreement with Live and Unsigned in January to promote the three-day Bradford Council-run festival.

That included the festival organisers offering one of the company’s winners a 20 to 30-minute slot to perform in front of tens of thousands of people at the festival.

The prize was in exchange for promotion of the Bingley festival by Live and Unsigned, including publicity in national music magazines.

Mr Wood said concerns had been raised over the company’s policy of charging hopeful bands to enter its competitions and complaints that bands had been offered alternative prizes to those originally offered.

However, Mr Wood made it clear that he had spoken to colleagues in the music industry and other festival organisers who said they had found Live and Unsigned’s competitions “very well run”.

He said: “Because our festival is not for profit, we thought it would be a good opportunity to expand our presence nationally. They asked us to promote their competition on our website but then we started to get comments asking why we were associated with them.

“There is nothing illegal going on but we do not want to be upsetting the local music scene.”

Mr Wood said promotion for the Live and Unsigned competition for this year’s BML had been removed from the festival website but the winners would still appear at this year’s festival.

A spokesman for Live and Unsigned said: “We are personally very disappointed and disheartened with the negativity aimed at both us and, as a result, Bingley Music Live, due to some people's negative dispositions towards us as a competition.

“Most of the negativity we receive is down to misinformation, assumptions and, in some cases, fabrication of the truth, based on selected accounts of the previous five years which we have worked very hard to improve on.”