The last stop on Matt Shadetek’s The Empire Never Ended Spring Tour will roll through Boston tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 15th.)

Having played host to almost every legend of experimental party music in the past decade, Dutty Artz is honored to show up and represent at a special edition of Beat Research for Boston’s growing Together electronic music festival. Since an astonishing number of Dutty fam have represented at Beat Research before, it’s amazing that this will be Matt’s first time playing the party! He will be performing alongside DJ Ripley, Chief Boima, and Beat Research co-founder DJ Flack’s live electronic band The Sublings!

You can also catch Matt and Ripley on several of the daytime panels for the Together Fest. Check the whole schedule here, and details on Matt’s panels below:

Grassroots Digital
Thursday, May 16th from 2 – 3:30 PM
Moderated by Wayne Marshall (Wayne & Wax, Harvard University)

From Mexico to Mali to Bed-Stuy, digital tools of production and publication are facilitating new interactions between grassroots culture and industrial capture, informal amateurism and art world remediation. Drawing on the expertise of several actors in this wide, weird world, our panel seeks to explore a few stories of spectacular circulation that shed light on the new forms of media exchange and exploitation.

Can’t Knock the Hustle: Econ 101 for the Independent Musician
Friday, May 17th from 4 – 5:30 PM
Moderated by Max Pearl (Cluster Mag), with speakers Natalia Linares (Conrazón), Dan Hirsch (Independent music curator), George Machado and Matt Shadetek (Dutty Artz).

Is anyone making rent off of independent music? If the artists aren’t, who is? More importantly, how are they doing it? Keeping in mind various types of privilege based on class, race, gender, and disability, we’ll aim to discuss the ways in which independent artists and industry professionals have or have not made money, and why or why not. Where does money come from—licensing your single to Arby’s for their new ad campaign? Touring non-stop for three months? Selling branded USB sticks? What are the structural problems that make financial security impossible for independent musicians? We will discuss the relationship between independent music and the looming presence of the marketing world, the troubled distinction between “independent” and “commercial,” and the ways in which artists have successfully turned creative success into cash.