Over the past five years, ticket sales have increased at the Maintenance Shop with students buying a little more than 600 more tickets than the public. 

The Maintenance Shop is in the basement of the Memorial Union and holds about 55 shows a year. 

“When I first started five years ago, we were sinking money into the M-Shop. In the last three years, it’s been doing well,” said George Micalone, assistant director at the Memorial Union. 

The Student Union Board said there is a substantial amount of tickets being sold.

“We always have, on a regular basis, for all of our shows, we’ll have more students buy than public buy just because they’re at a discounted rate and also because we’re in the university,” said George Potter, junior in communication studies and M-Shop co-director. 

The break for students usually takes off an amount of $5 from the original cost. 

“We always try to have a $5 break for students. That’s our target break,” Micalone said.

In 2009, the M-Shop sold 4,350 total tickets that year. Increasing in number, ticket sales in 2011 reached 5,450 and dropped in 2013 with a total of about 5,100 total tickets sold.

Jim Brockpahler, program coordinator at the Memorial Union said that student-bought tickets average around 60 to 65 percent of total attendance sales. The tickets bought at each show are determined through ticket audit breakdowns.

A ticket audit is a report that fully breaks down all ticket sales and transactions for any given event by price level, sales type and et cetera.  

For example, this past semester alone there were 2,367 tickets at the fully ticketed shows and 585 free shows with public purchases. Fully ticketed events charge every attendee the price of a ticket. The free shows are free to ISU students with a $10 fee to the public. 

This breaks down to a total of 2,897 attendees, with 1,760 being students and 1,137 being public. A further breakdown would show that this equals 61 percent student attendees and 39 percent public attendees. 

“The target audience, by and large, are students and the target marketing is to students,” Micalone said.

After almost 40 years of business, the venue that holds 194 seats still gets good reviews. 

“It’s kind of nice because it’s kind of an intimate place where you can see everyone up close. I don’t know that there’s a bad seat anywhere or a bad place to stand. You can see pretty well from wherever you’re at,” said Alicia Patten, an alumna of Iowa State University.

Some students even prefer this venue versus others.

“It’s pretty sweet. It’s a good place because it’s kind of small so you can kind of get a closer vibe versus seeing someone in a big arena. It’s pretty cool,” said Emma Haven, sophomore in agronomy.

Students also mentioned ticket prices are a “pretty good deal” and “fairly priced.”

Originally the M-shop hosted small theater productions. Over the years the shows booked at the M-shop have mainly depended on who is in charge of booking shows. 

Over the years the M-shop has featured jazz and blues, club genre music, alternative rock, and singer-songwriter music. Recently, in the past 6 years, the M-shop has expanded what shows they book, said Micalone. 

The M-Shop’s success has also been attributed to a different style of booking. The M-Shop does not book just any show that tour through the Midwest. They look for shows that are backed by the right agency and management.

“We changed our booking model and really tried to be more intentional about what we booked and how much we spent on them and how much we charged,” Micalone said.  

Also, a band’s social media is checked on a regular basis to see how well they advertise their shows.

“Just because they’re not represented by anybody that’s established doesn’t mean they’re a bad band … We want the people to come find us as much as we push the bands to the people based on their current success,” Micalone said. “So if we’re booking a bunch of bands that rely 100 percent on us to get the word out, then we’re not going to sell well. It’s just too complicated.”

If a band can not be booked for a headlining act, the M-Shop tries to book them as an opening act.

With better bands being booked and ticket sales increasing, Micalone said the goal of the M-Shop is more about growth than sales in which he commented, “I can assertively say there’s growth.”

Micalone also said he is pleased with the direction the M-Shop is going and does not plan on changing how they book shows. 

Tickets for all of the M-shop events can be found on the Student Union Board website or on the MidwesTIX website.