I’d like to get more eyes and opinions on this edit…
I personally think that Europe is a perfectly valid artist area when an artist isn’t from one particular European country (in this case, a duo from The Netherlands/England). it’s also widely used as an artist area in the database already, with 4 pages of artists as of writing
are there any reasons not to use Europe this way?
Europe is an odd item to have in the “countries” list as it is the only(?) continent available to select.
Still more accurate than nothing.
@reosarevok: If this is valid for artists, we should change the description here:
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release_Country
XE | Europe | for European releases where specific country unknown
The artist country is not the birthplace, nor the nationality.
It’s where the artist is based, where they live.
If it’s a duo, they likely live close by, they rehearse and everything, or is it an internet duo?
So, where are they based? Where do they live?
Well, that is a release country page, so it makes sense it talks about European releases, anyway 
I don’t see why “Europe” should not be a valid area. For one, the artist area specifically is an area and not a country. It indicates where the artist is mostly active. For local artists that can be smaller than a counry. And second Europe is a valid area. For me this is even less controversial than Europe as release country 
Regarding the edit: The question each edit must answer IMHO is “how does this change improve the data quality?”. It is totally unclear how an empty area is an improvement to the existing “Europe”. The edit would either need to show that a smaller area (e.g. “England”) fits the artist much better or that the artist really has no area where they are most active and the area does not apply to at all.
I’d vote no on this edit, but abstained for now to not cause it to close too early to give this discussion more room.