Spotify playlists in Bank of England's sights

Its chief economist has hinted that analysis of people's music choices could be a useful tool and give a "window on their soul". In a speech about new possibilities in data analytics, Andy Haldane said data on downloads from Spotify had been used to gain an insight into people's mood. Book lists, TV choices and even computer games could also be used to gauge consumer confidence. He said: "To give one recent example, data on music downloads from Spotify has been used, in tandem with semantic search techniques applied to the words of songs, to provide an indicator of people's sentiment." He said the results did at least as well in tracking consumer spending as the well-regarded Michigan survey of consumer confidence in the US.