Yeap, they are there and first on the list but plex is picking the second one on the list when Prefer local metadata is disabled. BTW… I would never manually select anything in the edit dialog’s. Plex makes them locked fields when you select anything which is why I use local artwork instead.
Yeap, full refresh of the entire music library was done just to be sure after setting Prefer local metadata to disabled. For good measure I also done a plex dance on single artist and all their albums, same result.
Only thing I did not try was creation of a whole new library as it seemed overkill based on the results I seen.
Also, when I switched back to Prefer local metadata to enabled and force refreshed the library the artist artwork came back (as expected).