Probably just me, but:-
I still use embedded, then the Album Art can go anywhere the music file goes, and unlike years ago, taking up disk space is no longer an issue.
It's not just you, I still use emebedded as well. Much more convenient if you later want to move or share files.
In this day and age, storage, as you say, isn't really an issue. I have just over 40,000 music files taking up just under 8.5 Gb of storage, a mixture of FLAC and MP3 mostly, all with artwork embedded. Given that they sit on an 8TB external drive which also contains all my pictures, documents and movies, storage really isn't an issue.