Whilst I can understand your annoyance, this is very common practice (indeed nearly all businesses practice it).

Manufacturers sell in large quantities to dealerships at a price negotiated between the two. Very ofthen they do not sell direct to the end user at all. When they do, they also have a suggested selling price and (generally) do not sell direct to the end user below that selling price. The dealers can sell at whatever price they want. They can sell way below the sugessted retail price and reduce their margins if they so desire.

Toontrax is in the business of developing and selling music software (for want of a better description). They could do all the marketing to end users themselves and not use dealerships, and this would be a massive job as people would only visit them if they’ve heard of them. Far better to have it available on sites which people visit anyway (eg Thomann, other music related sites, Amazon etc etc). In other words most of their visibility is through the distribution & retail channel.

If they start undercutting the prices the channel sells at, the channel will drop them and, unless they spend far more than I imagine they have available on marketing, they risk disappearing from the market altogether.

In summary, the dealers/distribution channel bear the burden (cost) of much of the marketing and indeed delivery of single items to end users and in return the manufacturers do not price them out of the market, by undercutting them.