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MBW’s Inspiring Women series profiles female executives who have risen through the ranks of the business, highlighting their career journey – from their professional breakthrough to the senior responsibilities they now fulfill. Inspiring Women is supported by Virgin Music Group.
Donna Caseine, who is today EVP and Global Creative Director at Reservoir, was destined to work in music from an early age.
While growing up in Los Angeles, her mom worked at Disney and her dad ran a recording studio, where she’d sit in sessions, watching people record and create.
“I was the kid with the headphones listening to every note, dissecting the music and trying to isolate a vocal, a bass or a drum. I was also the kid reading the liner notes,” she says. “There was no choice for me, there was no, ‘What else am I going to do with my life?’. It was an instant love. It’s always been music.”
Thanks to the early exposure and access, Caseine got a job straight out of high school as an assistant to the assistant of one of her dad’s studio clients. She was tasked with answering the phone by the second ring, which eventually graduated into giving feedback on songs.
That led to an assistant job at what was then MCA Music Publishing, where she started working for one of her mentors, Carol Ware, who was married to the late songwriter Leon Ware (who co-wrote songs for Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and Minnie Riperton, amongst others).
It was while working for Ware that Caseine learned the delicate balance between working for a corporation while advocating for the interests of creators.
She explains: “Corporations, at that time, had different agendas. The synergistic agenda was success, but there wasn’t transparency in deals and there were different philosophies in the corporate strategy that aren’t necessarily aligned to a creative mind.
“Carol would often come and say, ‘I’m so frustrated that this is our strategy in moving forward with this writer’. I got to feel and see how it affects both sides.”
That experience shapes Caseine’s approach to publishing today. “I’m an artist/writer advocate, so I lead from there, but there’s this business of music, and both need to coincide,” she says.
“I often think of the creative team as being the heart of a company and business affairs, the deal team and things like that being the head of the company. You definitely need both to survive.”
MCA merged with Polygram to become Universal Music Publishing, where Caseine spent 20 years until she joined Reservoir to open its West Coast office eight years ago.
While at UMPG, Caseine worked with the likes of Prince, Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande and Jill Scott.
She was promoted to her current role at Reservoir in 2020. There, Caseine has been involved in working with the catalogs of Joni Mitchell and Joe Walsh, signing songwriters like Ali Tamposi and Steph Jones (pictured). She was recently instrumental in signing publishing admin deals with Snoop Dogg and Death Row Records.
Discussing the latter, Caseine says: “From the Olympics to The Voice, and all that is in between, Snoop is everywhere and more culturally relevant than ever. In addition, he has new music coming out, which will bring Snoop’s music and artistry front and center again, as well.
“What he and the Death Row team are doing for the legacy of Death Row and moving the brand forward, it’s a really proud moment for me and for Reservoir to be on Team Snoop.”
Here, we chat to her about A&R, lessons learned across her career, developments in the music business, and more besides.
Do you have any habits or rituals that ensure you bring your best self to work?
I’m a runner, so I run five out of seven days a week, and I start my day off with that. It’s a moving meditation. At times, it’s an opportunity to spend time with friends.
It’s oftentimes an opportunity to contemplate a deal, a response to something or work through what to do next. The day can get away from you so I’m really encouraging when people, certainly myself, do something for themselves every day.
What’s your approach to A&R? How do you get the best out of the creatives that you’re working with?
My approach to A&R is, do I love it? Can I work with this person? Do we have a shared vision and a plan that we can work on together to accomplish, along with their other team members?
As I say to my team, just because a writer happens to be available, doesn’t mean they are a Reservoir writer. If I don’t feel something for myself, if I don’t feel something from the team, then it’s not something I can advocate for. You can’t advocate for someone, something, if you don’t believe in it, if you don’t love it.
How do you help songwriters build careers in today’s environment, when it can be difficult to make a living from music?
It’s constantly evolving. You have to go with your ears and your heart. Every successful artist is a new artist once. It’s about being able to communicate opportunities to our writers and talk through the merits of doing that session and spending time developing artists, being part of that story.
can you pinpoint the biggest lessons that you’ve learned across your career?
Part of it is, ironically, part of my daily ritual of running. I’ve run almost 19 marathons now and my career has been a marathon. It hasn’t been a sprint, success hasn’t happened overnight.
It’s about consistency, having patience and continuing to move forward, especially in music, which is challenging on days when you get No more often than you get Yes. When there may not be the right artist to sing that song, or that writer is a baby writer trying to get to an A-list writer. Maybe you can’t infiltrate that this week, but if you have a plan, maybe you can in six months. It’s about being patient and thinking about a long-term vision.
What’s the best career-related advice that you’ve ever been given?
The advice that I keep reminding myself of is to have a short-term memory!
You don’t know what someone’s day is like. When you email them and they don’t respond immediately, maybe they can’t. If someone sends a follow-up note, great. I love the follow-up. I love the assertion. Not the aggression, but the assertion and the reminder to pick something back up with someone.
You may not get a deal with someone that you’re passionate about who you desperately want to work with. If I don’t get a deal, I don’t think that writer is less talented because they don’t end up at Reservoir. My thing is, how do I continue to work with that writer?
One of the life lessons that I got early, thankfully, in my career, was being handed a roster and looking for opportunities for the writers that I was working with and the writers that were coming into town.
“It’s a small industry, learn how to work with people. You never know how it’s going to come around.”
I kept reaching out to this wonderful woman, a publisher named Judy Stakee, who would always come back and say, ‘How about Julian Bunetta?’ I would say, ‘Great,’ and we’d set up these sessions. Then, Julian finishes his deal and he’s no longer at Warner Chappell. I tried to sign him to Universal and didn’t get the deal, he decided to go to another company.
You know what? I continued to work with him and when he finished that deal, I saw him at a BMI Pop Awards, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m out of my deal. Do you want to talk?’ I ended up getting that deal and he went onto produce many albums and singles for One Direction. That was a lesson for me in being patient. It’s a small industry, learn how to work with people. You never know how it’s going to come around.
What would you say is the most exciting development happening in the music business right now?
The different genres and people coming together.
What I’ve really loved about part of my career story is having an appreciation for writers coming from different territories, whether they’re coming to LA and trying to write with LA writers, or sending writers to Nashville or London. Now, with the DSPs, every week you can listen to a playlist that has this song next to this genre, next to this genre. That’s exciting to me.
Also, look at what different artists have been doing lately in crossing genres. That’s how people are listening to music, because it’s not the radio format of just listening to pop, R&B or country music, you’re listening to a lot of different things together now. One of the many things that I love about music is the endless discovery.
You’ve spoken about how you’d like to see creatives better compensated. Are there any other big picture changes that you’d like to make TO the music business?
I don’t know if it’s a change but more opportunities like this to tell stories.
One of the things that has been on my mind is looking at the success stories of 2024, like Shaboozey and Teddy Swims. Teddy was signed to Warner at the end of 2019 — that’s a long process in belief, identifying talent and working with it, not just finding it and going, ‘Well, that didn’t work for a single so we’re done, you’re dropped’. Sabrina Carpenter just released her fourth album.
“with talent and people who are believing in you and advocating for you, you can find your way and find your listener.”
Those roles in different places might change. Maybe you’re not at the right place, maybe you sign a deal and you’re like, ‘This is it’, and maybe it’s not it. But hopefully, with talent and people who are believing in you and advocating for you, you can find your way and find your listener.
If you could go back to the beginning of your career and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
Be patient. Patience is hard because you’re excited and everyone would prefer things to happen immediately. But be patient, trust yourself and think about things long-term. I’m very proud that I’ve been able to do that. It hasn’t been easy.
How about your future plans and ambitions?
I have big dreams for Reservoir. I believe in what we’re doing, in the way that we work and support our writers and the way that we come together.
One of the things I say to the team, to myself, to any people who are listening, is that the writers are signed to Reservoir. They’re not signed to Donna Caseine. I firmly believe that someone hopefully remembers who signed them, but people will absolutely remember who did something for them. My strategy, my approach, is to do something to be part of their story.
Virgin Music Group is the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, which brings together UMG’s label and artist service businesses including Virgin and Ingrooves.
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