Rung 6: Almost Famous. An aging hipster with expensive clothes approaches you after a show and claims to be an A&R man for one of the Big Four. Much to everybody’s surprise, including your lawyer’s, he’s legit. You sign the contract, live off the advance, and spend several months in New York or LA or Nashvile, recording with a producer whose name appears on the back of several of your favorite records. Market conditions change, and the label decides to sit on the recording. And sit on it. And sit on it. Any money you earn from shows or paraphenalia goes toward paying back your $500,000 advance, and your contract prohibits you from recording or touring under any other name or with any other musicians. Too late, you realize that Steve Albini was right! Your keyboardist quits to take a job at Microsoft and your guitarist commits drug-assisted suicide. But not all is lost: Several years later, after a Wednesday night show at a small club with your new band, you recount your story to a tatooed anti-corporate type, who takes pity and goes to bed with you. You move in together, find a day job that’s not so horrible, and begin to raise a family, all while occasionally playing with friends or making recordings on the side, just for the hell of it. Or maybe you’re lucky enough to ascend to…

Rung 7: One-Hit Wonder. The label releases your catchiest song as a single and bribes every radio station in the country to give it a couple spins. Despite the corporate backing, Nic Harcourt plays it. KROQ’s program director hears Nic play it and adds it. Viacom sees that it’s been added on KROQ and starts playing the video on VH1. Clear Channel sees that it’s on VH1 and adds it to their light rotation list. Kids call in every time The Song is played, and they move it up to heavy rotation in several cities, causing VH1 to play it more. The Song appears in various charts, dragging your album into the top 100. You’re suddenly playing 3,000-seat theaters, where you quickly learn to save The Song for the end so people won’t leave. You open your first BMI statement after The Song has been in heavy rotation for a few months and your jaw drops. You call your responsible older sister and tell her to invest half of it in something you’re not allowed to touch for 10 years, then spend the rest on musical equipment and partying. Soon, your label owes you money rather than the other way around, but they convince you to put all of that money—and then some—into your next recording, which they and your friends and your lawyer and your accountant and your manager tell you is going to set the world totally on fire. Except it doesn’t. Suddenly, you find it harder to ignore the critical sniping from the local weekly and the jaded indie-rock fans who stand up in the front during your set with their arms crossed. Five years later, you can’t get a gig in your favorite hometown venue. Your label sells The Song for a TV commercial, and the BMI checks continue to trickle in for a few years, keeping you from the dreaded day job. Years later, a TV call-in show with a vaguely insulting name asks you to reunite and play The Song so a bunch of kids who have only heard it at weddings can vote on whether you are better or worse than a bunch of other one-hit wonders from the same era. But the money’s too good to say no. Occasionally when you’re drunk at a party, you pick up a guitar or sit down at a piano and bang out The Song, and your friends look away. Unless you had a string of hits, in which case you made it to…

Rung 8: The Big Time. You’re all over the radio and TV. You mess with interviewers by answering the same boring, predictable questions differently each time. You show up late to photo shoots, or not at all. Teenagers sleep beneath posters with your picture on them. Your grandparents brag about you to their friends. An entire cottage industry springs up around you, complete with hangers-on and sycophants. You realize that there’s very little difference between playing for 3,000 and playing for 20,000, except that the lighting is better and the audience is louder and farther away. And your drummer always wears a headset and plays to a clicktrack that’s synchronized with the lights. And you occasionally use triggers and backing vocal tracks to cover the parts you know you’re going to fuck up. But you don’t care if people say that you really suck because you can buy any car you want, as well as a nice house in your hometown and a second home in New York or Hawaii. Even if you never work or play another show again, you will always have enough money for you and your children to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. And someday, you might make it to…

Rung 9: Legend. Your label releases greatest hits albums with words like “Legendary” in the title and nobody mistakes it for irony. You’re embedded in the pop cultural DNA—your songs are familiar even to people who don’t like music, while music fans are required to have an opinion about you. You have your own tribute band. You’re rich, famous, and a total sellout.