So Kurt Vile let one of his songs be used on a commercial, Patrick Stickles called him out, Vile said he needed the money to buy diapers for his baby daughter and Patrick apologized.
Not much of a story but there is a question here: if bands can't make money recording or touring, how much is letting your songs be used for commercial purposes a selling of anything to anything? Integrity is all well and good and if you are Bob Dylan or U2, rolling in dough, and you don't want your named linked to a Volvo (but you do to Victora's Secret") OK, that's your call. But if all you are doing is struggling, if you are somewhere between food stamps and day laborer, you need to get your money where you can.
I've never believed you need to suffer for your art to make your art worth suffering for, I don't believe in the Protestant work ethic, or any worth ethic at all: it is 2012's upcoming stars misfortune that technology made their music readily available for free and there is nothing they can do about it.
When folks like Paul McGuinness, Metallica, Pete Townsend, others, complain that they have lost control of the distribution of their material, they have a point but not a valid point. The truth is there is no real villain (unless you consider your audience villains), or if there is, the villain is that you can file share, or. really file sharing is about to die, music stream, at will at there is no way to stop it. There is no way to police it.
All you can do is
1) adapt
And
2) find other avenues for file sharing.
One excellent way to make money without selling out in any reals ense is commercials. There is big money if you get lucky and you can use a song in an ad campaign to finance an album, no problem.