Moby is frustrated he can’t release more music: “I only release about 2% of what I make… 98% of it is collecting digital dust”With nearly two dozen studio albums to his name, Moby stands as one of the most prolific artists in the electronic music genre, with an output few can match and many can only aspire to achieve.
But did you know that all of the music the Play hitmaker released thus far makes up just 2% of what he actually makes?

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In a recent chat with MusicRadar, Moby reveals how he’s managed to maintain a consistently high level of output over the years and the reason some artists take a lot longer to release music.
“My question is a really simple one: what else are they doing?” he says. “I only release about 2% of what I make, which doesn’t speak to the quality of my music, but 98% of it is collecting digital dust and has never been released, so one of my sources of frustration is that I can’t release more music.”
“When I hear about musicians taking a long time to make a record, my immediate thought is, ‘gosh, they must have such phenomenal social lives or lots of other hobbies’,” Moby adds.
“I don’t date or socialise that much, I just spend all my time staying home and either working on my weird little TV/film activist production company, Little Walnut, or working on music.”
And while some musicians may attribute their lack of productivity to paralysis of choice given the sheer amount of music-making tools out there, Moby says that that isn’t a problem for him. If anything, he’s more bothered by his inability to explore every single sound his synths are capable of making.
“A part of me would want to be a little glib and dismissive of the idea of paralysis of choice, but at the same time it seems like it actually does inhibit people from making things,” he says. “I work in Pro Tools because I’m old, but when I open it and start playing around with soft synths and all these different things, I just get excited.”
“When you hear all of the different sounds that you can potentially use and [modify], I don’t ever feel overwhelmed or paralysed, I feel inspired that I have such an amazing palette of things to play with. If anything, sometimes there’s a wistful sadness that I won’t be able to hear all of the thousands of sounds from all of the soft synths I have and often wonder what I’m missing when I open up the Arturia CZ-101 or CS80V.”
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