“Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, from 2001, returned to the charts around the world in early 2024. The track was lifted by a clip from the film Saltburn and by a dance trend on TikTok. Old repertoire comes back to life when a creator or a film switches it on.
Behind the return is a generation with spending power
Fashion and cultural trends come back at intervals of roughly thirty years. Sartorial Magazine describes a sequence in which the 1970s drew on the 1940s, the 1980s on the 1950s, the 1990s on the 1960s, and the 2020s on the 1990s. The magazine links this to nostalgia, which it describes, citing the National Institutes of Health, as “a very strong catalyst for interpersonal connection and community”.
The economic trigger sits behind the cultural one. The generation that grew up in the 1990s and around the turn of the millennium now has spending power, and younger buyers are adopting the same era as vintage.
Creators switch the old catalogue back on
In music, most listening is still to new songs. According to Luminate, tracks released in 2010 or later accounted for 79.5% of US on-demand streams in 2024, while the 1990s accounted for 4.7%. Even so, the deep catalogue of songs older than five years makes up about half of all streams in the industry.
That catalogue is returning to the foreground through creators and film. The distribution layer is the edit, which takes an old track as the sound for a new video.
Vintage has become a business
The new cycle is most visible in second-hand. According to ThredUp’s 14th annual report, the US resale market for used clothing reached $55.5 billion in 2025, which is 12% of the $458 billion Americans spent on clothing. It grew 14%, four times faster than the new-fashion market, and is expected to head towards $80 billion by 2030. Before buying something new, 58% of Gen Z consumers check second-hand first, compared with 46% of all consumers.
Profitable second-hand in Europe
Vinted, based in Vilnius, Lithuania, is the European counterpart to this trend. In 2023 it reached profitability for the first time, with net profit of €17.8 million on revenue of €596.3 million, growth of 61%. For 2025, Vinted reported gross merchandise value of €10.8 billion, up 47% year on year, revenue of €1.1 billion and net profit of €62 million.
The music catalogue and second-hand clothing are now driven by the same mechanism. Creators switch both back on for an audience that never experienced the original era.
Comments