It's kind of amazing how well it works. I completely understand consumers being upset about anti-consumer behavior from businesses, but competitors using every tactic they can get away with to out-compete each other, especially enforcing established contracts, is expected behavior. Nobody wants monopolies, but the phenomenon of people swearing off a brand forever because they try to make use of their business advantages is fascinating. It might be a sign of a need for someone to intervene to level the playing field, but I'd never be personally offended by it.

I agree. The follow-up question is whether to applaud or deride them for it.

Uber and Airbnb, for example, do the same in their markets, and get applause for doing it, at least from some people.

Apple/iOS is a weird case, on the one hand Apple's market share is small, which would mean that one could say Spotify is playing mean (for example, would it allow Apple to advertise on their platform?)

On the other hand, Apple is in the same market as Spotify, and has more of the wealthy customers.

For now, I side with Apple in this case, but that may be because I do not know enough details of what this is about.