♡ SOUND METAPHORS NEEDS YOU ♡

Sound Metaphors was born on Reichenberger Str. 152, Berlin, four years ago, when I, Nemo, decided to move to Berlin and invest all my savings into building this record shop. One year later, I was joined by Castro and together we've explored our love for music in a number of projects.

Over the past two years we have put out over 20 vinyl releases across 5 sub-labels, of both new music and official reissues. We work closely with every artist and negotiate fair terms for every reissue, ensuring artists profit from the work we are sharing on their behalf. Our re-issue labels have made numerous favorite records affordable and accessible to everyone.

To execute our vision of what a great party could be, we built a sound system and started carrying it around this city on a monthly basis. Then, we built another bigger sound system and carried that one around instead. Have A Nice Day is a true labour of love – our best effort at bringing the people we love together on a dance floor with good sound, drag performances and your favorite DJs from around the world.
Profits were rarely made and when they were, we invested it back in the party.
The countless hardworking hours and financial losses were worth it every step of the way, because in the end, the sense of community that came about in these beautiful celebrations of music paid off in a currency of far greater value.

In a time where shopping has been confined to our phone screens, we try to remind ourselves that a record shop is a source of knowledge and pleasure in the sense of community it inspires. We've hosted countless in-store events in support of many local and international artists, showcasing their latest work and even distributing their releases. The shop has become a gathering spot for local and international record-diggers, musicians, DJs and producers, bringing people together through music – which we believe is eternal and invincible.

Sadly, however, Sound Metaphors is not.

We find ourselves in a precarious and worsening situation - the current implications of the coronavirus pandemic have caused our main source of income to disappear overnight.

The goal of this fundraiser is to keep Sound Metaphors financially alive through these perilous times. The future of the shop affects everyone in Berlin's music community: DJs, dancers, party promoters, music enthusiasts, record collectors and producers.

At the end of 2018, our shop was burglarized. This set us back thousands of Euros in losses and damages, in which our insurance company still has not agreed to compensate us for. Then, one year later, another burglary occurred, resulting in losses far greater than incident before with the same ongoing negligence on behalf of our insurance company.
Despite our rough start of the year, still, we tried to keep a positive attitude. We started using all the money we made with our DJ gigs to keep the shop going, thinking “It can't get any worse than this”.

But sure enough, it did get worse:

As of now, all in-shop sales (which accounted for 80% of our profits) have come to a full halt overnight.
Our DJ gigs have followed the same path.
As much as we have tried to transfer our sales from in-store to online, our expenses to maintain the business have only added to the already growing debt we have.
Our staff has increased to a total of 5 people for whom we are in part financially responsible.
Due to our current financial situation, our rental contract with our landlord is at risk and we could potentially face eviction in the near future.

So, it’s with heavy hearts that we come to this crossroads: either we close the shop or we think of another solutions. And right now, this seems like the only other solution.

We ask you for your help to allow us to keep doing what we've been doing for the past 4 years and to grow even further. We have many new releases planned for this year and can't wait to see you all at our H.A.N.D. parties and in-store events in the hopefully not too distant future!

With this amount, we will be able to keep our valued family of staff and resume operations at the shop. This includes a tremendous change in sales priorities as we select and re-label our online stock to include almost all of our secondhand records which are currently unavailable online. This is a huge task and requires countless hours of labor as we upload thousands of records online, handle shipments of online orders and packaging. But above all, your support will allow us to pay our monthly utilities and keep our landlord from evicting us for the next few months.

We try to make your contributions worth your while to the best of our abilities. Check out our range of contribution rewards featuring special edition merch designed exclusively for this campaign :)

From all the contributions, on average 50% will be going into production costs of the presents we're offering in return for your support, not including the 5% fee that goes to startnext and German tax.