Cover Band vs. Dance Band vs. Variety Band

I've frequently been asked by performers which is better to choose as your primary category - Cover Band, Dance Band, or Variety Band? I thought it would be interesting to see how the three compare in terms of traffic, gig requests, and bookings.

Traffic

I looked back at our traffic during the month of January (2010) to these three categories. Here's the breakdown:

Category	Total Visits	Total Page Views	Bounce Rate*
Cover Band	25,862	498,873	26.92%
Dance Band	10,233	271,597	21.57%
Variety Band	8,879	284,321	14.69%

So in terms of traffic, Cover Band definitely gets the most traffic. Even factoring in its higher bounce rate, it still beats out Dance and Variety Band. Round 1 goes to Cover Band.

* And for those who were wondering, Bounce Rate is the percentage of visits in which the person lands on one page and then leaves.

Gig Requests

I then looked at client-added Gig Requests during the month of January (2010). Here's the breakdown:

Category	Total Gig Requests	% of Visits That Become Gig Requests
Cover Band	577	2.2%
Dance Band	511	5.0%
Variety Band	467	5.3%

Interesting! Cover Band has more Gig Requests, but the % of Visits that become Gig Requests is much lower than that of Variety and Dance Band. This would re-affirm what the bounce rate suggests - a higher percentage of traffic for Cover Band does not convert. But that being said, Cover Band still gets the edge in terms of raw number of Gig Requests generated. Round 2 goes to Cover Band.

Bookings

I then looked at client-added Bookings during the month of January (2010). Here's the breakdown:

Category	Total Bookings	% of Gig Requests That Become Bookings
Cover Band	77	13.3%
Dance Band	53	10.4%
Variety Band	46	9.8%

So when went we get to the bottom line - Bookings - Cover Band still comes out on top - both in terms of raw number of bookings and the % of Gig Requests that convert to Bookings. Round 3 goes to Cover Band.

So does this mean that any band who is trying to decide between Cover, Dance or Variety should automatically choose Cover as their primary? Not necessarily. Why? First of all, I just looked at one month worth of data - not enough to draw any definitive conclusions. Secondly, competition. While you're likely see more action in Cover Band, you're going to be competing with more bands. We currently we have 484 bands whose primary category is Cover Band, but only 241 with Dance Band as primary, and 233 with Variety Band as primary.

My recommendation is this - try one as your primary category for a month and see how it goes. Then switch to a different primary category for another month. Compare your results between the 2 months. Did one get you a noticeably higher amount of gig requests and/or bookings? Hopefully by testing in this way, you'll get some idea as to which primary category is working best for your particular situation. The only way to know for sure is to test, test, test.