There are still a lot of people who don't quite realize how lucrative performance royalties from music in commercials can be. That was the take away from the commercial music panel MAM's Nan Wilson and COPILOT's Ravi Krishnaswami participated in with Morgan Thoryk of McGarry Bowen (Chicago) at SXSW last month.

Even reps from the PROs themselves took away new knowledge in how revenue can be generated from ad music, per Nan.

"The other big take-away is that music publishers have really ramped up their effort to place music in TV programming and commercials," she said. "It's proven very effective at marketing new and old talent, and a significant income stream from the licensing fees. And very, very few of them (at SXSW) had any clue about how to get paid for music in commercials."