NME did a great job of picking out 100 artists from across the world, that are expected to make a name for themselves this year. Here's a few of them:

Death Tour - hardcore hyper-pop

Enny - slick London rapper

Hollow Sinatra - blender of genres

Pa Salieu - already on end-of-year lists

Baby Keem - Kendrick Lamar's protege with a great flow

Marijannah - stoner/metal from Singapore where drugs are strictly forbidden

Skullcrusher - atmospheric folk

For Those I Love - The Streets-meets-James Blake Irish singer

Fousheé - alter-soul

Frosty - a talented rapper and lyricist

Genesis Owusu - R'n'B meets rap, somewhat grandiose

Goy Gumbani - chill, conscious rap

Kenny Hoopla - indie-pop

Martha Skye Murphy - pianist and Nick Cave collaborator

Scalping - techno meets punk

The British listened to 139bn audio streams last year, up from 114bn in 2019, with streaming accounting for more than 80% of overall music consumption in the UK in 2020, Guardian reports. The top 10 streaming artists in 2020 each achieved more than half a billion streams in the UK, while 8,000 different acts totaled 1m streams annually. Lewis Capaldi's 'Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent' was the most-streamed album for a second successive year in the UK, while The Weeknd’s 'Blinding Lights' was the most-streamed single. CD sales slumped a further 31% to 16m units in the UK, while sales of vinyl records increased for the 13th consecutive year, by 11.5% to 4.8m copies purchased.

The IRS has determined Prince’s estate to be worth $163.2 million — nearly double the $82.3 million valuation put forth by the estate, NBC reports. Court documents put the balance of the discrepancy largely on music publishing rights and “recording interests.” As a result, the IRS is seeking an additional $32.4 million in federal taxes, as well as a $6.4 million “accuracy-related penalty” for “substantial” assets undervaluation. Prince left no will, leaving it to his estate to wade through some messy legal waters. All of this legal drama has meant that Prince’s heirs, his six siblings, have yet to see a cent of their inheritance. Meanwhile, the estate has paid out tens of millions to consultants and lawyers.

"I never thought I was going to be a singer. I'm not making music to be recognised as a singer. It's been a by-product of it that that has happened" - UK singer Greentea Peng told BBC, which chose her as their Sound of 2021. "I'm literally doing my healing process in front of everyone because every song I'm writing is just me going through the works, I'm not making anything up" - she added about her music-making experience.

Gerry and the Pacemakers singer Gerry Marsden, whose version of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' became the FC Liverpool's anthem, has died at the age of 78, Sky reports. Marsden's band was one of the biggest success stories of the Merseybeat era, with Sir Paul McCartney describing Gerry and the Pacemakers as The Beatles's "biggest rivals". The band's other best known hit, 'Ferry Cross The Mersey', came in 1964. Liverpool FC posted on social media that Marsden's words would "live on forever with us".

Playboi Carti's Christmas Day release 'Whole Lotta Red' grabs No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the first top spot for the rapper, Billboard reports. Playboi Carti's second studio album starts with 100,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Dec. 31.

Claude Bolling, the French pianist, composer and arranger who attained a worldwide following through his melodic blend of jazz and classical influences, has died aged 90, Chicago Tribune reports. He arranged music for Brigitte Bardot and Juliette Greco among others, wrote soundtracks for hundreds of French film and television productions, as well as American movies 'The Holiday' and 'Joker'.

Viagra Boys and Amy Taylor cover John Prine's song 'In Spite of Ourselves' about the fact that there's love for anybody; Foo Fighters released 'No Son of Mine', a song Dave Grohl said was their version of David Bowie’s 'Let’s Dance'; the Stellar band consisted of Yves Tumor, Kelsey Lu, Kelly Moran & Moses Boyd shares an art-pop single 'Let All The Poisons That Lurk In The Mud Seep Out'; Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy release a cover of Lou Reed’s 'Rooftop Garden' with George Xylouris.

More than 2,500 people have attended an illegal rave in a warehouse at Lieuron near Rennes in Brittany, which began on Thursday and lasted for two days, Le Monde reports. Local authorities said police had tried to "prevent this event but faced fierce hostility from many partygoers". Attendees have clashed with police, setting fire to a car and throwing objects at officers attempting to shut the event down. At least three officers have been injured. Late on Friday, France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin held a crisis meeting to discuss the event. On Saturday morning the rave was interrupted, the sound was shut, and participants began to leave the premises.

Wham!'s festive song 'Last Christmas' has topped the UK singles chart for the first time, 36 years after it was first released, the Official Charts reports. The Christmas classic was streamed 9.2 million times over the last week, knocking LadBaby's 'Don't Stop Me Eating' off the top spot. The song was first released in December 1984, it has returned to the top 10 a further six times, and now holds a new chart record - for the longest time taken for a single to reach number one.

Guardian presents 30 new artists expected to break big this year, including some drill, hardcore punk, ambient music, indie-rock etc. Among others, the G has big expectations from Ivorian Doll, drill's first female star, Irish James Blake-meets-The Streets artist David Balfe, Ghanian pop singer Amaarae, London rapper Enny...

Intricate and enigmatic rapper and producer MF Doom had died aged 49, his wife Jasmine Dumile revealed on New Year's eve, Pitchfork reports. The elusive rapper has however died two months ago, on October 31. The cause of death was not revealed. Born Daniel Dumile in London, raised in Long Island, he first rapped under the alias Zev Love X with the group KMD in the late '80s. Inspired by the Marvel character Dr. Doom, he rechristened himself MF DOOM and released several solo records where he spit bars with playful and twisted intricacy, grounded by his own classic soul- and funk-sampling production. He also released collaborations 'Madvillainy' with Madlib, 'The Mouse and the Mask' with Danger Mouse, as well as projects under aliases Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah. He also produced tracks for Ghostface Killah and MF Grimm. In 2010 he returned to London where he found everything to be "all new, all fun". MF Doom's latest release was, as we now know, a posthuman collab with BadBadNotGood released two weeks ago. Brooklyn Vegan collected tributes to MF Doom from numerous artists, including Flying Lotus, El-P, Tyler the Creator, Questlove, Jay Electronica, Q-Tip, Denzel Curry, Westside Gunn, DJ Premier, Phonte, JPEGMAFIA, Ty Dolla $ign, Roc Marciano, Sa-Roc, Cordae, Playboi Carti...

Billie Eilish has lost 100,000 followers on Instagram after she posted a drawing she made of women’s breasts and other private parts, Cosmopolitan reports. The 19-year-old Eilish was asked to post “a drawing you’re really proud of”, and she shared a notebook page full of private female parts. In the half-hour since she first shared the photo, Eilish had rapidly lost 100k Instagram followers, to which she reacted in her story - “LMFAOOO y’all babies smh”.

The year was great, judging from the perspective of music released in 2020, proving nothing can turn off the creative spark. In an attempt to remember the year by its virtues, we substitute the usual bad-news-chronology of a year with the best albums list ordered chronologically (by the date they were released). So, THIS was the year.

Music REDEF's chief Jason Hirschhorn tweeted a thread of music business documentaries, including docs about the Rolling Stones, Bad Boy Records, Clive Davis, David Geffen etc.

Variety has listed pay-per-view concerts being held on New Year's eve, with artists ranging from BTS, Justin Bieber, Jason Isbell, Norah Jones, and Willie Nelson, to Post Malone, John Legend, and Jason Derulo. EDM music lists dance music livestreams with equally attractive names - Carl Cox, Armin van Buuren, David Guetta...

The UK government has announced that it had tried to secure better conditions for UK touring musicians during the Brexit negotiations, but the EU rejected its proposals, BBC reports. From 1 January, free movement of people between the UK and the EU will end, which means that touring musicians and their technical crews will face new rules, and could be subject to additional visa costs and paperwork. UK nationals will need a visa for stays of longer than 90 days in a 180-day period, and there will be restrictions on their activities. Spain, Italy and Denmark will require additional work permits.

Diddy handed out $50 bills, as well as $50 Publix supermarket gift cards and bags containing hygiene products to a massive crowd in Miami Overtown neighborhood, Complex reports (watch the video below). Diddy's Sean Combs Foundation is also giving a grant to an organization that will help 175 households pay their rent throughout the health crisis. Beyonce added an ironic twist to her gifts - she gifted her friends a gold, diamond-encrusted chain that reads "2020", shaped like a hand giving the middle finger, Billboard reports.

Music Redef made a sad, sad list of 600 music-related deaths in 2020 and at least 70 artists and industry figures lost to the coronavirus. The list could have been even bigger, had it gone even deeper globally...

There were 1.842 million LP’s sold in the US during the week leading up to Christmas, ending on December 24th, which made it the biggest week the format has had since 1991, Billboard reports. The previous record was achieved just a week prior, when 1.445 million vinyl records were sold between December 10th and December 17th. The top-selling vinyl album last week was Paul McCartney’s new solo effort 'III', which sold a 32,000 units, making it the third-largest sales week for a vinyl record since 1991.

Production company Seaview announced the one-time-only streaming performance of 'Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical' slated for New Year's Day, BBC reports. The musical will feature Wayne Brady as Django, Tituss Burgess as Remy, Adam Lambert as Emile, Kevin Chamberlin as Gusteau, André De Shields as Ego, Andrew Barth Feldman as Linguini, Priscilla Lopez as Mabel, Ashley Park as Colette, Owen Tabaka as Young Ego, and Mary Testa as Skinner. It was collectively created by TikTok members. 'Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical', in support of the Actors Fund, will stream on Jan. 1 (at 4 PM in California, 1 AM Jan. 2 in Paris, and 5 AM in Peking) for 72 hours only.

Armando Manzanero, the acclaimed Mexican songwriter and performer, has died aged 85 from Covid-19, CNN reports. Manzanero’s romantic crooner songs, sometimes translated into English, were performed by artists including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Perry Como. He has written more than 400 songs and released more than 30 albums.

Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Dudamel, 39-year-old music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has premiered his virtual reality film 'Symphony' in Madrid. It took four years and the efforts of 250 people to produce the innovative project that's essentially happening in two huge white trailers. The film is split into two, 12-minute sections. The first, shown on a giant screen, follows three young musicians in Spain, the US and Colombia as they practise their instruments. For the second, visitors are invited into the other trailer, given a virtual reality headset and headphones and they suddenly become part of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, get trapped inside a violin and then fly through the constituent parts of a trumpet. The project will visit 100 towns and cities across Spain and Portugal on a 10-year tour.

Taylor Swift holds the Billboard 200 chart top spot for a second week with her album 'Evermore', as the set earned 169,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Dec. 24, as Billboard reports. Swift's sales were aided by the arrival of the album on CD on Dec. 18. Paul McCartney’s new 'McCartney III' debuts at No. 2 with 107,000 equivalent album units, with 32,000 copies sold on vinyl, the third-largest sales week for a vinyl album (only Jack White and Pearl Jam had stronger vinyl weeks years ago).

Tony Rice, a "giant of the acoustic guitar", and "the master bluegrass picker", has died at the age of 69 on Christmas morning, NPR reports. Rice, famous for the quick, fluid sounds was "the king of the flatpicked flattop guitar... I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful", Jason Isbell writes on his Twitter. Ricky Skaggs, who had performed and recorded with Rice, called him “the single most influential acoustic guitar player in the last 50 years”. Other tributes came from musician Béla Fleck and the comedian and longtime banjo player Steve Martin. Rice released dozens of albums, and he played with everyone from Jerry Garcia to Dolly Parton and received many honours.

Navy Blue released his new song '1491' featuring Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def); Deftones singer Chino Moreno and Far guitarist Shaun Lopez have resurrected ✞✞✞ (Crosses) with a first new track from the project in six years - an 80s synth-pop cover of Cause & Effect’s 'The Beginning of the End'; Eddie Vedder released an EP which includes an acoustic cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'Future Days'.

BBC aired a lovely Christmas story about northern lights turned into music. The two people behind it are biologist Karin Lehmkuhl Bodony who lives in Alaska, and Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner, who works with natural sounds and scientific environmental data to make a piece of music derived from the sounds of the aurora.

Kanye West released a surprise EP 'Emmanuel' performed by Sunday Service on Christmas Day, Rolling Stone reports. The new project, executive produced and composed by West, arrives as a "celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ". It's five tracks of acapella songs in Latin.

The Neverland ranch of the late Michael Jackson has been sold to billionaire Ron Burkle, a former friend of Jackson, for $22m, a quarter of its initial asking price of $100m. The 2,700-acre (1,100 hectare) compound in Los Olivos, California has been rebranded as Sycamore Valley Ranch and has undergone extensive redevelopment since Jackson's death. The businessman saw the investment as a land banking opportunity, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Husband-and-wife duo LadBaby topped the UK 2020 Official Christmas Number 1 with their latest song 'Don’t Stop Me Eatin’'. The single scored 158,000, the biggest opening week for a single this year. Money raised from the single goes to foodbank charity The Trussell Trust. LadBaby now match a record jointly held by The Beatles and Spice Girls, the only other acts who can lay claim to a trio of consecutive Christmas Number 1s.