Metropolis Records

Metropolis Records is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania based record label, distributor, and mail-order store specializing in the post-industrial field such as electro-industrial, synthpop, futurepop, darkwave, and gothic musical genres.

Metropolis started business as a retail record store under the name of "Digital Underground." Metropolis began signing acts as a record label in 1995, with groups such as Mentallo and the Fixer, Numb, and Front Line Assembly. It has arranged for its bands to tour together such as Numb and Front Line Assembly together in 1996, and Project Pitchfork and Front 242 in 1998. It also established extensive distribution channels to a variety of commercial channels, providing access to major commercial markets for typically niche-interest groups. By the late 1990s it had become the dominant specialty record label in North America for electro-industrial. Several groups once signed on Wax Trax! Records later released on Metropolis, including Front Line Assembly, Front 242, KMFDM, Doubting Thomas, PIG, Noise Unit, VNV Nation and Assemblage 23.

Though no longer a distributor, Record labels distributed through Metropolis included A Different Drum, Alfa Matrix, Cleopatra, Nilaihah, KMFDM, Projekt, Sigsaly Transmissions, Strange Ways, DSBP, Vampture, and WTII.

In an interview in 2010, Metropolis Records' CEO Dave Heckman spoke openly about the negative effects of illegal downloading on the music industry: "This industry has been absolutely decimated."