Survey: Being a female artist in pop is a 'lonely' field

NEW YORK (AP) — A new survey of pop charts over the past six years finds that men overwhelmingly dominate the ranks of artists and songwriters and that 2017 represented a six-year low for female artists.

University of Southern California researchers released a study on Thursday that shows women comprised just 22.4 percent of artists and 12.3 percent of songwriters on the Billboard's top singles charts. Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift dominated the charts during this time.

"For women, pursuing music as an artist is largely a solo activity, and appears to be a lonely one," the researchers wrote. They noted that the numbers were "surprising" because women are big customers of music, making up 53 percent of digital music buyers in 2014.