Why are there so few female artists nominated for this year's Brit Awards?

The harsh reality is that the pool of female talent is smaller because the record industry is terrible at nurturing female artists. Of the 193 albums submitted for consideration for this year's best album prize, only 35 were by women, with just 19% of the artists signed to record labels in the UK being women - BBC says in a great article about the lack of female artists nominated for this year's Brits. Why is that? "Anecdotally, I've heard that labels are not too keen on signing and developing female talent because it costs more," says Rhian Jones, a contributing editor to Music Business Worldwide. "There's stylists, there's make-up artists and the shows tend to be bigger productions. Whereas Lewis Capaldi can just get a guitar out, put a t-shirt on and everyone loves it."