Nostalgia has always been good business for the music industry. According to new research from Vevo, though, it may be more powerful – and more nuanced – than we knew.
The music video company’s latest study, Then Is Now, published in July, found that music videos trigger nostalgia more forcefully than an audio track or live performance. More striking still, 65% of Gen Z respondents feel nostalgic for eras they were never alive to experience – ‘borrowed nostalgia’. Some 74% of Bob Marley’s audience on the platform were born after 1979; 62% of Madonna’s were born after 1989.
For Vevo’s EVP of Content, Programming and Marketing, JP Evangelista, this cuts to the core of what a music video actually is. “A video doesn’t just preserve the song – it preserves the entire world around it,” he says. The culture around the release, he argues, is embedded in the video and in the memory of the video. “They don’t simply remind you of a song you loved. They can instantly reopen an entire chapter of your life.”
Then Is Now wasn’t just a cultural think piece. It arrived alongside a new ‘nostalgia purchasing layer’ within Vevo Evolve, the data suite Vevo launched in 2025 to give brands sharper targeting and measurement across its network of more than a million music videos. In effect, it lets advertisers buy against catalog ‘moments’ as they re-enter the culture, rather than trying to forecast them months in advance.
“The next phase of growth isn’t about selling more pre-roll,” says Evangelista. “It’s about extracting greater value from finite inventory.”
Vevo said in April that sales of another new-ish initiative, Artist Franchise – which attaches a brand to a specific artist across premieres, catalog, and originals – had more than tripled year-on-year.
Evangelista’s recent promotion and widened remit mean more of these calls are now his – as music video turns up on more screens, and in more places, than it used to. More than a third of Vevo’s views now happen on television screens – climbing toward 50% of the audience once co-viewing is counted. Music video’s expansion into the living room, which Vevo has talked about for years, is well underway.
Yet mobile remains the company’s single largest source of traffic, and it’s there that Evangelista sees both the biggest opportunity and the industry’s most conspicuous failure.
“Short-form vertical video has become one of the most powerful engines of music discovery in the world,” he says, “but the commercial frameworks around it have not kept pace with the behavior.”
The company will deliver another several hundred original programs before 2026 is done, having already captured performances from Niall Horan, Foo Fighters, Tyla and Becky G. And it’s pushing music video into new places: a recent US partnership with Rockbot pipes Vevo’s programming into gyms, retail stores and restaurants.
The throughline is a conviction that music video is becoming “screen-agnostic” – met on the phone, in the living room, and increasingly out in the world. Here, Evangelista talks to MBW about nostalgia, and YouTube, connected TV, and where Vevo fits in the short-form era…
What are the new areas of responsibility that come with your new role – and how do they dovetail with how Vevo itself is changing?
The teams I oversee haven’t fundamentally changed, but the expanded role has shifted more of my focus toward what comes next for Vevo – how we extend our programming and monetization expertise beyond our traditional YouTube and linear TV businesses.
“We’re keen to play a larger role in short-form video.”
JP Evangelista
Social networks and YouTube Shorts are a big part of that. We’re keen to play a larger role in short-form – particularly ultra-short-form – video, where we believe there’s a major gap in how music is curated and monetized, and in how much value flows back to artists and rightsholders.
On the content side, we’re set to deliver another exceptional year featuring several hundred artists. A big priority is to significantly raise our editorial ambition – contextualizing important new releases and finding the moments to bring renewed attention to catalog – while vastly expanding the personality-led content we make with artists. Performance will always be central, but audiences increasingly want to understand the artists behind it.
How is ‘borrowed nostalgia’ reshaping the way labels and artists approach catalog and new releases?
The most important point is that this isn’t simply a consumer trend. Artists, creators and studios are all actively drawing on nostalgia to engage audiences, particularly Gen Z and Millennials. You can see it in new releases – the old-school sensibility of Olivia Dean, the Y2K aesthetic around Zara Larsson, the success of TV shows such as Love Story and Off Campus.
Artists are looking back, but not trying to recreate the past; they’re reinterpreting familiar sounds and references for an entirely new context. That has real implications for catalog. A nostalgic moment can interrupt passive scrolling and prompt exploration – in fact, 67% say hearing songs from the past makes them want to discover more music from that era.
So, one resurfaced track can be the gateway into an artist’s wider body of work. For labels, that means catalog shouldn’t be treated as a static archive: it can be programmed, contextualized and connected to contemporary artists and cultural moments.
Music videos are timeless – a durable body of work, but also cultural IP with recurring commercial utility. That’s what borrowed nostalgia unlocks: one generation’s memory becoming another generation’s discovery.
Vevo has talked for years about the expansion from YouTube to the living room. Where are audiences actually discovering music through Vevo today, and how has the balance between YouTube, connected TV, and your FAST channels shifted lately?
The television screen has become a much more significant part of our audience mix. Today, more than a third of our views happen on TV screens – and once you account for co-viewing, as many advertisers do, television at times represents closer to 50% of the audience composition around our content. It also creates a different, more immersive and communal experience than a personal device.
Mobile is still our largest individual source of traffic, so it remains vital for discovery – hence our push into short-form. Audiences often encounter a new artist or moment on their phone, then increasingly choose to continue in the living room. YouTube, of course, continues to provide extraordinary global scale, while connected TV and our FAST channels complement it with a more programmed, lean-back experience: rather than searching for one video, viewers enter a genre, decade or mood and discover music through the programming around it. So, the balance hasn’t shifted to one platform replacing another – it’s a more complete ecosystem.
You’ve spoken about how algorithms favor newer uploads, so views wane after the first week. How do Vevo’s own curated and ‘decades’ channels counteract that?
That’s where our role as a curator and tastemaker becomes important. On many platforms, discovery is heavily shaped by algorithms that weigh recency and immediate engagement. That’s powerful around a new release, but it can mean visibility declines once the launch window passes.
“We’ll always look at new ways to collaborate with artists.”
Our television channels work differently. Audiences enter a live, programmed feed and are served the video immediately – no searching, no needing to know what they want. Those channels are overseen by a human team, so we can program around the identity of a channel, its audience and the cultural context of the moment.
A video might feature because it fits a particular decade or mood, connects to a current event, or simply deserves to be seen again. That absolutely gives catalog a longer tail. It’s not about rejecting algorithms – they remain important – but complementing them with human curation and judgment.
How are you thinking about investment in original content – more of it, or fewer, bigger swings?
Original content remains core to our strategy, and our conviction in it has only grown as we’ve seen how much of an asset it is for artists. Rather than framing this as ‘more’ versus ‘fewer, bigger swings’, we’re deliberately doing both.
Franchises like DSCVR work because they’re built for discovery at scale; they thrive on volume and give artists a consistent, recurring platform to break through. At the same time, we’re getting sharper about identifying which formats can become bigger cultural moments, and leaning into those with more production value, aligning with artists and labels at key career moments.
As the industry evolves, so will our approach. We’ll always look at new formats and new ways to collaborate with artists.
In a tighter-margin era, how do you articulate Vevo’s value today – particularly for developing artists without large audiences?
Now more than ever, video is critical to breaking through the noise. Artists are competing for attention in a crowded environment, and a clear visual identity is no longer optional; it’s fundamental to how audiences discover and connect with them. That doesn’t mean everyone needs a huge budget: a video needs to be creative, authentic and able to resonate, and the format is much broader than the high-concept official video – performance videos, lyric videos and visualizers all build an artist’s world.
That’s especially important for developing artists, who need the right environments, editorial context and distribution to be discovered. Unlike broader entertainment platforms, Vevo is a premium environment dedicated entirely to music video – it’s not one category among many for us, it’s the whole proposition. Our value comes through the combination of distribution, promotion, editorial support, programming and monetization.
A lot of viral music moments now start on short-form before they reach video. How does Vevo turn a track that’s blown up on TikTok into sustained views and lasting value on its own platforms?
Short-form platforms increasingly act as the spark for discovery. A song can break through very quickly there, often before audiences have connected with the artist behind it.
Our role is to build on that momentum by giving fans a deeper, more immersive way to experience the music. Once we see a song resonating, we can work with the artist, label and their team to extend its lifecycle through programming, editorial support, live performances and other original content, placing the official video across playlists and TV channels, connecting it to adjacent moments.
That’s the difference between a viral moment and lasting value: short-form creates awareness, but premium music video converts that attention into deeper fandom, sustained viewing, and a more durable asset for the artist.
What’s the genuine opportunity in short-form vertical video – and is it a space you compete in, feed into, or leave to others?
We see a genuine opportunity, and it’s an area we’re actively exploring, particularly through how we develop, produce and extend our Originals.
Social platforms have become an enormous discovery lever, but they’re also fiercely competitive and saturated. The challenge isn’t creating more short-form content; it’s creating something distinctive enough to cut through, while still feeling authentic to the artist and valuable to the audience.
For us, the opportunity is to use short-form as an entry point into a deeper relationship with the artist – formats native to how people consume vertical video, connected back to premium music videos and broader storytelling, so short-form becomes a discovery layer rather than isolated promotion.
I’m especially interested in how that plays out as YouTube amps up Shorts. There’s still so much work to do across the industry on monetization and measurement here; the audience is clearly there, but the commercial framework hasn’t caught up. Given our expertise, we believe we can help that space mature, so it’s definitely not a market we intend to leave to others.
Looking ahead, what’s the single biggest shift in how people consume music video that you’re betting on – and how are you positioning Vevo to stay ahead of it?
The music video will become increasingly screen-agnostic. Audiences won’t think of it as tied to one platform or device. They’ll expect to meet it throughout their day, on their phones, in the living room and increasingly in physical spaces outside the home.
We’ve already seen television become a major part of consumption, and social transform how songs are discovered; the next opportunity is out-of-home. In the US, we recently partnered with Rockbot to bring Vevo’s programming into gyms, retail stores and restaurants, reaching audiences where music is already central but underused visually.
These aren’t just extra screens. Each environment is a different programming opportunity – what works in a gym differs from a restaurant or hotel. We’re positioning ourselves by becoming more flexible in how we produce, package and distribute: long-form for the living room, vertical and personality-led formats for social, and curated channels that work across digital and physical spaces. The future isn’t one screen replacing another; it’s music video becoming more present throughout people’s lives.
Given a free hand, which one thing would you change about today’s music industry?
I’d accelerate the industry’s progress on the measurement and monetization of music across short-form video platforms.
Music is competing for attention alongside everything else, including unlicensed and AI-generated material, yet we’re still not adequately monetizing the enormous amount of discovery happening there.
The industry is almost certainly leaving significant revenue on the table. The opportunity isn’t to resist short-form – it’s to build the infrastructure that lets artists and rightsholders share more fully in the value it creates.
While short-form music consumption has exploded, the industry has yet to build a commercial framework that properly values that consumption. Vevo is uniquely positioned to fill this void, given our already established relationships with rightsholders and advertisers, sales infrastructure, brand safety proposition, and deep monetization expertise. Just as we did on YouTube or connected TV, Vevo can easily centralize sales and monetization efforts for the music industry, serving as an official provider for premium music video inventory across these platforms.
We need the industry and the platforms to rally around models that return more meaningful value to creators, artists, songwriters and rightsholders – starting with more transparent measurement of how licensed music is viewed, shared and used.
