Trivia / Play

• Breakthrough Hit: Disregarding the disaster of his previous album, prior to this, Moby had only been reasonably popular in the underground Electronic Music scene. With this album, he became a household name.
• Career Resurrection: Oh yes. Moby's album before this, Animal Rights, was such a flop that it single-handedly undid all of the hype he'd built around himself in the dance music scene up to that point and cost him his record deal with Elektra, nearly ending his music career for good. This album, inversely, undid the failure of Animal Rights twofold, not only saving his career but making him even more famous and respected than any of his previous work had. By the next decade, he was a bona fide pop star.
• Money, Dear Boy: According to Moby, licensing all of the songs for media use was just a way to recoup the album's initial losses when none of the songs charted. He figured it would be the only way to get people to hear the music at all, and even then, the licensing only paid him so much.
• Similarly Named Works: British Post-Punk band Magazine released a Live Album that was also titled Play.
• Sleeper Hit: Moby originally intended for this to be his last album. Both he and his manager predicted it would sell 250,000 copies at most. Within a year of its release, it would become the first music album even to have all of its songs licensed for other media.

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