Band or DJ? You are asking the wrong question.

Band or DJ is the question everybody asks and it is not the useful one. Both can fill a floor. Both can empty one. The decision should come from three other questions entirely.

What does the room allow?

Start here, because it eliminates options for free. A six-piece band needs stage space, load-in access, power, and a venue without a hard decibel limiter. Plenty of Melbourne venues near housing have limiters, and a band that cannot play at band volume is an expensive disappointment.

Ask the venue for the stage dimensions, the decibel limit and the power available before you audition anyone.

What do you want at 10:30pm?

This is the real question. A band gives you spectacle, live energy and a genuine sense of occasion. It also gives you their repertoire, their arrangements, and breaks between sets.

A DJ gives you the actual recordings people know, continuously, with the ability to read the room and change direction in eight seconds. Less spectacle, more precision.

Most rooms that stay full until the end are running a DJ for the late night, whether or not there was a band earlier.

The combination most people actually want

Live music through the parts of the night that benefit from atmosphere, then a DJ for dancing. A duo or trio for canapés and dinner, then a DJ from the first dance onward. Or a band for two sets with a DJ covering the breaks and taking over at the end.

This costs more than one and less than two full offerings of each, and it gives you the strength of both where each is strongest.

What to ask before you book either

• How long are the sets and how long are the breaks? What plays during them?
• Who is actually performing on my date? Named, in the contract.
• Will you take requests, and will you decline the bad ones?
• Do you MC, and to what extent?
• What do you need from the venue — power, stage, time, access?

That third question matters. A performer who plays every request will empty the floor as reliably as one who refuses all of them. The skill is knowing the difference, and it only comes from having read a lot of rooms.

Book the person, not the category

The gap between a good DJ and an average one is far larger than the gap between a DJ and a band. Ask who is performing, hear them if you can, and get the name in the contract.