Vaporware was technology releases that never came to be, highly promised and loudly touted software and video games that were delayed for years until they dematerialized. Vaporware sold the future before it existed, boosting stock prices on fanciful dreams.
Vaporwave is a musical style (from about 2010) born from a nostalgia for the 1980s: a disillusioned re-creation of a aesthetic that never existed, at once cynical of the 1980s optimism and perversely sincere in its stylistic adherence. Somewhat techno, somewhat adult contemporary, all muzak, it is intentionally looping and unsettling. As a critique of optimistic, neocon capitalism, it revels in broken promises feeding us back what we loved in fragmented memory form: it is a remembrance of hope, distorted, often cheesy, beautiful and melancholic.
As we now consume Vaporwave as nostalgia, many of the artists keep the music free, so it cannot be commoditized, attempting to avoid the pitfalls of Vaporwear reselling our dreams.