Does anybody remember the hit record crest factor study that Chris (Airwindows) did?
This was a study of the crest factor of the biggest hit records in the history of recorded music and the results were enlightening to say the least.
Thriller, Eagles, Beatles, Bee Gees, etc. BIG crest factors - often around 18-20 dB of crest.
As others have said, crest factor will vary according to many factors including instrumentation, arrangement, amount of reverberation (which brings average up), etc.
I have a track with ~27dB of crest on my site:
high crest.mp3
No compression/limiting or reverb - what ChrisJ would call 'high contrast'.
Andy