Don't worry too much about exact numbers - those will change with time anyway as classes get tweaked.

I don't know exactly how far a Bard is behind some of the other ranged classes in pure DPS, but once you take into consideration that Bards won't need to interrupt any of their inductions when moving out of AOE attacks, they won't be that far behind in damage output.
If you want to do ranged DPS without having to stand still, then Archer/Bard is easily the best choice.

Running group content solo is not really viable in FFXIV, unless you outlevel the content significantly.