Google picks Base for Music for its Gemini Startup Discussion board – as $1.7M-backed French firm says it makes use of AI to foretell music advertising ROI

Google for Startups will host its Gemini Startup Discussion board at Google‘s Mountain View headquarters in California subsequent month.

The 2-day occasion brings founders of startups on the Seed to Sequence A funding phases along with Google’s AI specialists.

The discussion board is run with Google DeepMind and Google Cloud. Google says it explores “how AI will redefine your trade, remodel your organization, and unlock unprecedented development.”

Google notes that the greater than 100 startups collaborating, from 17 international locations, have been chosen from over 2,000 functions.

One in every of them is French music advertising firm Base for Music, which tells us it’s the one music tech firm within the cohort.

The corporate sells what it calls a advertising working system to producers, labels, and music firms. It pulls advert spend, viewers, CRM, and streaming knowledge into one setting, which Base for Music says lets it monitor the return on every advertising funding.

It raised EUR €1.5 million (USD $1.73m) in a June 2025 funding spherical backed by Belgian music tech investor LeanSquare, French buyers from Tremendous Capital and One Inexperienced, and angel buyers specializing within the advertising tech sector.

Base for Music was based in 2021 and experiences it now helps greater than 20,000 artists and labels worldwide.

The corporate works with distributors and aggregators, servicing their shoppers or equipping their in-house advertising groups. It tells MBW its major companions embrace Ditto, iMusician, IDOL, and, extra just lately, TikTok-owned SoundOn, and Cinq Music.

Base for Music explains that its know-how helps artist groups resolve which releases to advertise, when, and the way a lot to spend.

The corporate claims that advertising ROI has lengthy been “a black field for the trade,” and that its tech can now predict that return earlier than a marketing campaign launches.

“The principle piece lacking as we speak [for us] is clear, structured monetary knowledge tied to streaming revenues.”

Maxence Bazin, Base for Music

Requested what challenges the corporate got down to resolve, Maxence Bazin, Base for Music’s CEO and founder, stated: “Mastering efficient music advertising as we speak requires a mixture of media shopping for experience, knowledge evaluation, and AI – there’s no approach round it.

“The core problem we got down to resolve was constructing a technical infrastructure able to aggregating these fragmented advertising knowledge sources and correlating them to floor key development alerts.

“The alternate options on the market every provide centralization instruments targeted on one particular facet of promoting. This forces groups to navigate between disconnected options, and extra importantly, dangers overwhelming them with data on the very second they want readability to make the most effective strategic choices.

“We spent almost 5 years creating our personal advertising working system: a platform that centralizes all of those advertising knowledge sources and correlates them to allow data-driven strategic choices. With the rise of AI, we’re now capable of apply this method at a a lot larger scale, and extra importantly, start predicting the outcomes we are able to anticipate from a marketing campaign earlier than it even launches.”

Base for Music factors out that the music trade principally hyperlinks AI with creation, however Bazin argues that “AI, knowledge and media shopping for are opening a brand new chapter for music advertising: turning fragmented knowledge into totally managed ROI.”

Bazin added: “Our conviction is {that a} technical infrastructure constructed particularly for music advertising has by no means made extra sense. Mixed with the ability of AI, this know-how lets us observe outstanding development among the many artists we assist, day after day.”

The corporate constructed its personal AI, Base Intelligence, over the previous yr as a part of the Google for Startups program in France.

It turns every artist’s knowledge into suggestions, delivered within the firm’s Artist Dashboard or as experiences for account managers.

Bazin cites a marketing campaign for Brazilian artist Tom Ribeira as a case examine. The marketing campaign was run in partnership with Ribeira‘s administration workforce at Grand Musique Administration, a distinguished artist administration agency primarily based in France.

Grand Musique Administration has been a Base for Music companion “since its earliest days and now applies the platform’s data-driven method throughout its total roster,” based on the startup.

Base for Music experiences that Ribeira went from zero to over 200,000 month-to-month listeners on Spotify in lower than six months together with his debut EP, “on a €1,000 funding that turned worthwhile inside three months.”

Requested concerning the Ribeira marketing campaign, Bazin advised MBW: “Primarily based on the alerts we detected throughout platforms, we used our Advertising and marketing OS to handle the overall deliberate advertising finances of €1,000 for the discharge of his debut EP.

“This was the total marketing campaign spend, allotted throughout totally different platforms to succeed in particular audiences and generate as many engaged listeners as doable. This method allowed us to stimulate the algorithmic advice of the EP’s lead monitor on Spotify, utilizing media shopping for as an acceleration lever that triggers development throughout different channels.”

A report outlining the marketing campaign highlights the efficiency of Pedaço, which it describes as Ribeira‘s debut single. The one, launched on June 5, 2025, shares its title with Ribeira‘s debut EP, which got here out in March 2026.

The report places whole advert spend at €1,216 throughout three campaigns run between June and August 2025.

The primary, on Instagram, discovered that almost 90% of the listeners it despatched to Spotify have been in Brazil, so the opposite two focused Brazil solely.

The report credit the campaigns with getting the monitor picked up by Spotify‘s algorithm, which now accounts for near 62% of its streams.

By the tip of 2025, the monitor had earned €1,317 in internet Spotify income, the report claims, and its algorithmic streams have continued into 2026 with out additional advert spend.

“Information possession would simplify all the course of, however we don’t see the market shifting in that route anytime quickly.”

Maxence Bazin

For now, Base for Music‘s ROI predictions depend on trade averages, Bazin says.

Requested what continues to be lacking in music advertising, Bazin stated: “The principle piece lacking as we speak [for us] is evident, structured monetary knowledge tied to streaming revenues. Mixed with advertising knowledge, this is able to permit music advertising to exactly measure the return on funding of streaming campaigns.

“Each artist and label we work with has their very own distribution companion, which at present limits our entry to this kind of knowledge. Because of this our present ROI prediction fashions depend on normal monetary benchmarks, resembling common per-stream income by DSP.

“Direct entry to this knowledge would permit us to correlate the territories and audiences focused by advertising exercise with the streaming revenues they really generate. As soon as that bridge is constructed, it turns into doable to drive an artist’s development with a exact, real-time understanding of profitability.”

Commenting on whether or not knowledge possession has to vary, Bazin stated: “Information possession would simplify all the course of, however we don’t see the market shifting in that route anytime quickly. Within the meantime, the one path ahead is to adapt, which implies constructing highly effective know-how able to working throughout exterior platforms.

“That is exactly why we based Base for Music, and the event of AI represents an actual alternative for us to deploy that imaginative and prescient at scale.”

Requested what an artist workforce may be capable to do in advertising 5 years from now, Bazin stated: “In 5 years, music advertising may very well be repeatedly fed by all of an artist’s income streams, whether or not that’s streaming, merch or stay, giving groups full visibility over each funding made throughout an artist’s profession.

“Every space of exercise and the info it generates would turn into a supply of perception that may be correlated with the others. That correlation would permit every income stream to behave as a lever for the remainder, unlocking full management over an artist’s total development.

“Getting there requires a robust advertising working system able to processing and correlating ever-growing volumes of knowledge by means of AI, in addition to artist groups and companions prepared to pool their actions and experience.”Music Enterprise Worldwide