The Bank of England wants to know what you’re listening to

Is nothing sacred? The Bank of England is saying that data from companies like Spotify and Netflix could provide it with a good insight into how we're feeling, which might give a more nuanced understanding of how the economy's doing.

What it means: Economists have been banging on for years about different ways to measure economic strength. The current main measure, GDP What's this? , tells us a lot about how businesses are doing and how much stuff we're churning out, but it doesn't provide any understanding of what the impact of economics on humans is. Last year, we wrote about this study which asked people how they're feeling, looking at stress, happiness and anger levels.

The Bank's point here is that we actually have a lot of that kind of information at our disposal already – or at least companies like Netflix and Spotify do. They're huge sources of data about what we like and dislike – just think about it, Netflix knows what you want to watch before you do.

So fine, it does feel a little bit like watching your dad dancing to Skepta, but maybe they've got a point.