“As a professional musician, I used to believe the royalty system just worked. I trusted that things were being handled properly behind the scenes. But the deeper I got, the more I uncovered how flawed and fragmented the system really is…”
Divisi CEO Lalo Iensen isn’t just complaining about the challenges of music rights and royalties: with his startup he’s trying to do something about it.
Iensen is one of the longlist nominees for Music Ally’s International Entrepreneur of the Year (IEOTY) award in 2025, with Divisi’s app having already impressed judges at startup contests from Bogotá and Miami to Bilbao.
The elevator pitch: “We connect musicians with royalty societies through a simple app that automates song registration, using smart contracts and a super user-friendly experience that saves time, cuts friction, and ensures no royalty money is left on the table,” explains Iensen.
“We’re tapping into a $19bn market that remains largely unmet, especially across Latin America, where outdated systems still block thousands of creators from getting paid what they deserve.”
So far Divisi has registered more than 2,000 users, as it builds its partnerships with collecting societies and music publishers across Latin America, as well as other senior industry executives.
“Artists are joining too, DrefQuila, one of Chile’s most influential urban musicians, is not just a user but a partner in our journey,” says Iensen.
“He believes in Divisi as a catalyst for change and has joined forces with us to bring this solution to the industry. By managing his catalog through Divisi and collaborating transparently, he’s helping us build trust and visibility across the creator community.”
As a professional musician, Iensen saw first-hand some of the difficulties that artists face around rights and royalties, which led to the realisation that sparked Divisi.
“The real issue wasn’t just about missing payments, it was about missing data. Inaccurate, incomplete, or delayed metadata is what keeps royalties from flowing to the right people,” he says.
“That insight reshaped everything. It made me double down on building Divisi as a simple, collaborative way to fix data at the source, before the song is even out, and to become the standard for data entry in the music industry.”
In 2025, Divisi’s plan is to keep building and serving its users, as well as to lay the groundwork for the next phase of the music industry’s evolution.
“First, we’re committed to working side-by-side with our clients, not just collecting feedback, but truly co-creating solutions alongside them,” says Iensen. “Second, we’ll be releasing new technology that’s been in our lab: Everything we ship in 2025 will aim to make rights data faster, clearer, and more actionable.”
Blockchain technology as well as AI will play a part in this development. But Iensen is also looking ahead to generative AI’s impact on music, and what that might mean for Divisi.
“The explosion of AI-generated music is not a theory, it’s already happening. And that means the amount of music needing registration and proper attribution is about to grow exponentially,” he says.
“At Divisi, we’re preparing for that future now, so the infrastructure for monetisation and fairness doesn’t break when creation goes exponential. Our goal is to help the music industry not just catch up, but finally run in sync with the speed of creation.”
