Complete Pitchfork Festival lineup: 8.2

This afternoon Pitchfork announced the complete bill for the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park. Back on March 6th, we threw out predictions for the lineup, and it's time to check in. Here's who we got right:

Vampire Weekend, Atlas Sound, Fleet Foxes, Health, No Age, Times New Viking, Bon Iver, Sebadoh, Raekwon, High Places, and Fuck Buttons. (Full lineup after the jump.)

To toot our own horn, that's a 50 percent success rate. How is it so easy to predict, you ask? We merely looked at Pitchfork's Best New Music. Here's where it gets potentially shady.

Consider: Out of the fourteen acts that released records in 2008, eleven received the "Best New Music" stamp, a prime spot at the top of the website, and an average rating of 8.5 (the average rating of new records from the complete lineup comes in at 8.2).

Earlier today, an unknown rookie act playing the festival, Titus Andronicus, earned the pole position on the main page, hours before the announcement they would be kicking off the fest's second day.

Is it a conflict of interest* for the same entity that controls the buzz on acts for a summer festival to also book that festival? Jim DeRogatis seemed to think so in a fantastic recent interview with Pitchfork honcho Ryan Schreiber. To an outside observer, it's impossible to tell whether Pitchfork is booking the bands that are making the best indie music, or whether they're artificially inflating the stock of bands in an effort to drum up interest in its live music business. There may be no impropriety at all, but having an overlap between Pitchfork's editorial and business sides brings up questions of conflicts of interest, whether or not any have occurred. It's fine for Pitchfork Inc. to both write about bands and curate a music festival, but when the same hands are steering both endeavors, things start to smell a bit funny.

All this makes me wonder what rating the website will bestow upon No Age's Nouns when it sees release on May 6.

** = new announcements

FRIDAY, JULY 18
The Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow's Parties present "Don't Look Back" featuring
PUBLIC ENEMY performing It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
SEBADOH performing Bubble and Scrape **
MISSION OF BURMA performing Vs.

SATURDAY, JULY 19
Animal Collective
Jarvis Cocker
The Hold Steady **
!!!
Vampire Weekend
No Age
Atlas Sound
Dizzee Rascal
Extra Golden
Fleet Foxes
Elf Power **
Caribou **
Ruby Suns
Fuck Buttons
Jay Reatard
Icy Demons **
A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Boban Markovic Orkestar **
Titus Andronicus **

SUNDAY, JULY 20
Spoon
Dinosaur Jr
Spiritualized
M. Ward
Ghostface & Raekwon
Les Savy Fav
The Apples In Stereo
Boris
Cut Copy
Dirty Projectors
Bon Iver **
Dodos
**Times New Viking
Occidental Brothers Dance Band International
El Guincho
King Khan
HEALTH **
High Places **
Mahjongg **

* Full disclosure: I used to write reviews for Pitchfork.