They certainly could have cut some costs, but this was a primarily you-tube based band on their first tour with a lot of hype to live up to. It's an investment for the future, exactly as he says in the article. Cutting down on hotel costs is possible, but it's very hard to hire professionals to be part of a touring gig when you're conspicuously cutting costs on quality-of-life aspects of the budget. These guys are a duo, everyone else in the crew were their hired employees. I see them getting a lot of flack for the costs of this tour, and I think it's pretty unfair and represents a lack of knowledge of the contemporary music industry. Early-career tours are -always- a money pit, even when you have the kind of following this band has. The amount of capital that goes into advertising, travel, and expenses is huge, and to come out of it only 10k over-budget in order to produce a professional, quality act is actually pretty impressive. Like, there's no question that they could have made a profit, but it just would have been a poor offering that wouldn't have garnered much respect of reputation in an industry -hugely- based on networking and rep. This is a small-business enterprise entering the wider music industry off of a decent online presence that makes them a -very- modest wage (30k a year for 12+ hour days...). If this were a restaurant, it would be as if people were telling them that instead of pulling out the stops to open the space they wanted, they should stick with the lemonade stand until that turns them enough profit!