Several friends have told me that they like the song in Apple’s new MacBook Air commercial, “New Soul” by Yael Naïm, which I bought today. This isn’t the first time a song used in an Apple commercial has made a big splash.

At this point, everyone pretty much knows what an iPod is, so a new commercial most likely has very little effect on Apple’s iPod sales. The artist whose song is chosen really benefits the most from the commercial. Apple may have become one of today’s biggest hitmakers. Songs used in current iPod commercials are often among the top songs in iTunes Music Store.

Most recently “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex” by CSS and “1234″ by Feist have benefitted from this exposure.

Last year’s Macworld keynote introduced “Flathead” by The Fratellis in a new iPod commercial, giving the band some of their best exposure.

One of the earliest iPod commercials used “Saturday Night” by Ozomatli, which gave the band a huge popularity boost. They returned the favor by giving a free concert at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference last year.