Vevo study shows streaming boosts nostalgia for music videos

A new Vevo report has found that streaming platforms are speeding up how people discover and return to older content. It says music videos create feelings of nostalgia more than any other music format.

>The report, titled Then is Now also notes that 65 percent of Gen Z consumers feel nostalgic about time periods before they were born, a trend the company calls borrowed nostalgia.

Vevo surveyed more than 1,800 people from Gen Z, Millennial, and Gen X groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The company released the findings on July 9.

JP Evangelista, executive vice president for content, programming, and marketing at Vevo, said the ease of streaming has increased engagement with older material. This includes catalog songs from established artists and new releases.

It is not only about personal memories. Many people seek shared experiences, which contrasts with the divided listening caused by personalised recommendation systems. Nostalgia now serves as a form of cultural connection. The wider entertainment sector, including artists, studios, and producers, has responded by adding nostalgic elements to music, television, fashion, and other areas.

The survey found that 88 percent of all respondents said music sparks nostalgic feelings. This was higher than movies at 81 percent, television at 80 percent, and gaming at 50 percent.

Among music formats, music videos ranked highest at 68 percent, followed by audio tracks at 59 percent and live performance videos at 50 percent. Revisiting older content, such as music and television programmes, was the top trigger for nostalgia at 76 percent.

Sixty percent of participants identified with shared nostalgia. This refers to collective memories formed through reboots and widely shared material rather than direct personal experience.

Gen Z reported borrowed nostalgia at 65 percent. Millennials and Gen X followed at 55 percent and 54 percent. One in three Gen Z respondents said they felt born in the wrong generation.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said that hearing older music led them to explore more songs from the same period.

The report points to Sabrina Carpenter’s Manchild as an example of a current release using borrowed nostalgia. Vevo said the video was its most-watched premiere of 2025 in the three markets surveyed. Its style draws from the 1970s film Badlands and the 1991 film Thelma & Louise

Other examples include a 547 percent rise in views for Harry Styles’ Sign of the Times after its use in a karaoke scene in the film Project Hail Mary. Sade’s No Ordinary Love gained 52 percent in views after the Hulu series Love Story launched. The Beatles’ catalog increased 62 percent following the Anthology documentary on Disney+.

Justin Bieber saw a 221 percent increase in views after his Coachella performance that included footage of his younger self.

The study examined audience demographics by decade. It found that 74 percent of viewers of Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry were born after 1979. For Madonna’s Material Girl, 62 percent of the audience was born after 1989.

The findings come as Spotify expands its video offerings. The platform started testing music videos in beta in 11 markets in March 2024. It extended access to Premium users in the United States and Canada in December 2025. In June, it allowed artists to upload videos directly. Spotify reported that watching a video increases subsequent streams of the song by 64 percent over the next three weeks.

Vevo says it generates more than 22 billion monthly views across television, desktop, and mobile platforms. It is available on YouTube, Samsung TV Plus, Roku, Pluto TV, and Amazon Prime Video.

On Vevo’s own charts, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ Die With a Smile was the most-watched music video of 2025, with 932 million global views.

The report underlines how streaming has changed content consumption. It allows younger audiences to connect with older eras through music videos and related media. This has commercial implications for artists, labels, and platforms as they balance new releases with catalog promotion.