As outlined in the guidelines, artist areas should usually be set to country. This is one of the more common mistakes that beginner editors make.

Like we do with track capitalisation (MBS-13711), we could display a warning message when editors select something other than country.

Perhaps with this text:

{{}}Did you know: The artist area should almost always be set to the country that they are most commonly associated with, not smaller areas like cities or towns, unless they are very strongly associated with a smaller area - for instance the Berliner Philharmoniker is an exception and has the area Berlin. Click here to read the guidelines.

This one is so common that it could perhaps even do with a "I confirm..." checkbox.