Artists and independent creators have been herded into increasingly elegant pens.

Spotify, Sony and the other great intermediaries offer distribution, discovery and scale, but they also control access, visibility, payment and the terms upon which the creator may reach an audience. The gatekeeper has not disappeared. It has merely acquired an app.

That arrangement is not inevitable.

The promise of Bitcoin is not simply cheaper payment. It is institutional independence.

A creator should be able to operate a platform they control, establish their own commercial relationships, distribute directly, receive payment directly and retain the records that connect them to their audience. They may still choose to use publishers, streaming services, promoters or social networks, but those services become optional complements rather than compulsory landlords.

That distinction matters.

Freedom does not require rejecting every intermediary. It requires the ability to leave one without losing one’s identity, customers, income and work.

A genuinely decentralised system allows the actor to build, promote, transact and organise without first seeking permission from a corporation that can alter the rules, suppress visibility or change the revenue split after dependence has been created.

The creator may use other platforms, but is no longer imprisoned by them.

That is decentralisation.

Not thousands of people renting space inside the same corporate enclosure, but individuals possessing the practical ability to build their own gate, choose whom to admit and walk away when another person begins behaving as though the gate belongs to them.