If 30% is too much, publish your content as a web app. If you want to play in the walled garden, pay the cover charge.
On the other hand if you want to write an app for a mobile device you're, realistically, either going to write it for Android or iOS. On the Android side you can distribute it as an apk assuming you can handle the cost of writing self-updating code - but on the iOS side you're hooped. Mobile devices are a part of modern life, the fact that one company dominates the market (and another company takes the remainder) leaves the market extremely unhealthy.
Musicians have about the same freedom in this respect as any application developer, practically speaking. AKA, they're just as exploited (if not moreso, see other comments about how musicians are also being screwed over by studios).
With Spotify, however, musicians can't choose how much their music is worth, and the payment of royalties is also not exactly transparent.
These companies created something that grew into a foundational element of modern life in about a decade. That’s amazing and should be awarded with trillions of dollars. The market should reward this corporate behaviour extremely well, and punish the IBMs and GEs and Boeings harshly.
As an aside, Apple et al are also not resting on their laurels, and keep pushing the envelope. My 2 y.o. + iPhone is literally better than on the day I bought it. I’m more than happy to pay more for apps / subs to get this.
Apple makes very popular computers in their iPhones, but other phones, tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, etc all do the same stuff.
Eg. When your phone is broken, you can still call people over your laptop, and you can access an internet browser from basically anything
Both firms leveraged their dominance in the mobile OS market to dominate the mobile app distribution market, and then they leveraged their dominance in the mobile app distribution market to dominate the mobile app payments market.
When talking about monopolies, the working definition is firms that have significant and durable market power such that they can set prices and exclude competitors[2]. Both Apple and Google fit that bill for the mobile OS, app distribution and payments markets. Whether you use the words monopoly, duopoly or cartel to describe them doesn't really matter, because all of those terms are accurate descriptors.
[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
