It’s that time of year when journalists make wild predictions about who and what is going to be big in any chosen field over the next 12 months.

In music, at least, these lists have become more and more important over the last few years. This is partly because there’s more music around now than ever before.

Throughout 2009, a staggering 100,000 albums were made available, compared with just 25,000 during 1999. And of those 100,000, only around 225 artists (2%) sold more than 10,000 copies.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a hit any more — the likes of Florence and the Machine, Mumford and Sons and Pixie Lott were all new UK artists, and all big sellers in 2009. It’s just harder to stand out from the crowd without serious backing from your label and all the marketing and PR techniques that involves.

Predicting future success has oddly become both easier and more difficult in recent years. There are pointers to note like the BBC Sound of 2010, a long list of artists deemed likely to succeed by a handful of industry tastemakers, and the Critics’ Choice Brit Award.

The inaugural gong was given to Adele two years ago, who went on to win a clutch of Grammys, while Florence and the Machine benefited from the leg-up this year, with the album Lungs becoming a runaway success.

Ellie Goulding will pick up the Critics’ Choice award at the Brits in February, and, as she features in the BBC’s list of hopefuls for the coming year and her single Under The Sheets is playlisted on numerous radio stations, hers is a name you will hear a lot more of next year.

Originally from Hereford but now living in London, 23-year-old Ellie started playing guitar and singing when she was 15. Her sound blends a traditional acoustic singer-songwriter style with electronic flourishes courtesy of bandmate and producer Starsmith (Fin Dow-Smith). Any fans of Imogen Heap will fall in love with Goulding’s way with a melody and interesting, unconventional brand of pop.

Also likely to succeed in 2010 is Marina and the Diamonds. The name might immediately bring Florence and the Machine to mind, but the similarities kind of end there.

Marina is a musical maverick — Britney Spears would love to have her pop melodies, but at the same time the Welsh-born future star is critical of vacuous celebrity culture.

She’s a fan of classical literature and hates being lumped in with other female singer songwriters just because she’s a girl. Her single, Mowgli’s Road, is fantastic.

Dutch singer Esmee Denters became a sensation on YouTube after filming herself covering the songs of Brandy, Beyonce, One Republic and Justin Timberlake. It was the latter who spotted one of her clips and signed Esmee to his label. She’s just come off a three-week tour with N-Dubz, so should be a big hit when her album lands in January.

And now on to something completely different with Stornoway. The five-piece might be named after a remote Scottish village, but they are in fact from Oxford.

Their gorgeous folk-tinged pop is getting music critics all hot under the collar, while their debut single Zorbing was played on Radio 1, Radio 2 and 6Music.

As the recent Facebook campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to be Christmas number one proves, music fans will not be dictated to and want to make their own choices.

Some of the artists mentioned will be huge next year, others will flop or fail to connect with a large audience.

The most important thing is that there is such talent coming through each year.

The record industry may be in terrible shape, but the core ingredient, the music, is in good health.