Faces of Gaming: Nathan Green, Music Man and CEO of New Level Radio – Spreading casino musical vibes

For 19 years, Nathan Green has been selling a kind of environment to casinos that combines music and promotions in a way that never existed.

Green and his partner created New Level Radio, a new business category that is a casino-focused audio experience adding excitement and vibes to casinos through curated music and interactive promotions.

The company builds fully customized on-property music, messaging, and video programs for casinos, hotels, resorts, restaurants, and retail businesses. It now serves hundreds of businesses, with casinos and gaming as its core market.

So, for almost 20 years, Green and his partner Sam Ambrose found themselves selling a successful concept that no one realized they needed.

Sensory marketing
“The first thing that your brain notices when you walk into a space is what you hear; it’s quicker than what you smell or what you see. It happens in like .0001 seconds and that’s the first thing that people know. Your brain notices what you hear.

“So literally, you could have somebody walk into the casino and you’re in that 50- to 65-year-old demographic at eight in the morning and there’s a heavy metal Metallica song playing. Not that there’s anything wrong with Metallica. I love Metallica, but that can literally have a person walk in, turn around, walk out, and go to a different property. That’s how impactful the music is.

“So, we’re very fortunate that gaming really understands the importance of the full sensory experience, and really it starts with music,” Green said.

New Level Radio serves 60 casinos across the United States, reports a 90% retention rate, and operates across hundreds of businesses in more than 30 states. Green became CEO in 2024 after serving as vice president since the company’s founding.

Clients include Palms Casino Resort, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and New York-New York in Las Vegas; Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut; Talking Stick Resort in Arizona; Beau Rivage in Mississippi; Argosy Casino; Affinity Gaming properties in Nevada; and many tribal properties. Recent additions include Jake’s 58 Hotel & Casino (NY), Glacier Peaks Casino (MT), Casino Fandango and Legends Bay Casino (NV), Casino Miami (FL), and Legends Casino Hotel (WA).

Affinity for music
Green grew up in the Denver, Colorado area and as a young person had what he called an “affinity for music.”

“Just by happenstance, when my parents would have people over, I was always creating the vibe with music. I enjoyed reading the room and who was there and what the energy was and then building out playlists.

“Never did I even think that at some point that would become my core identity of what I did for work. It was just something I enjoyed doing, and just I love to see how people reacted to different styles of music, reacted to different songs, reacted to different energies,” Green said.

Light bulb moment
Green spent his early days working in sales and marketing for radio and television stations around the Denver area and after six months decided to apply to a radio station in Hawaii. He won the job and moved to Hawaii, where he met his co-founder Sam Ambrose, a popular local afternoon radio personality.

After receiving requests to record commercials for local clients, the light bulb moment went off for Green and his partner that placing promos within a musical format for brick-and-mortar businesses was something that was not done by any music provider.

“I remember exactly where I was standing when this idea came to into our minds. And it just hit me like, why don’t we just create an actual radio station with promotions and curated music? In 2007, there wasn’t a big push to integrate messaging into brick-and-mortar businesses.”

Validation
The initial validation for the new concept came from their first client, a small barbecue restaurant in Hawaii, and was quickly followed by a mobile phone company.

“The first meeting we ever had was with a mobile phone company in Hawaii, and I flew in for the meeting. We brought a sample audio demo on a CD, and my business partner actually had this Sony Dream Machine, so we physically bought the little CD player; it sat on the desk, and played this demo.”

After a few years, Green added restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions like early client the Dole Plantation, “the second most visited place in Hawaii.”

“We started with mid-level franchises and some one-off businesses. Fast forward about a year and a half in, we said, ‘What about casinos?’ Casinos are really the bread and butter of what makes us special because they have multiple areas that really need a curated experience. That’s when we really started shifting toward gaming. We were extremely lucky to get our first casino client in the Blackhawk area in Colorado shortly after that.

“Soon after that we signed Luxor and Excalibur in Vegas; and obviously, that was a real kind of watershed moment for us. Then we started focusing on the gaming space pretty heavily,” Green said.

Music nightmares
Every casino operator has had the experience of coming into the gaming space on a Monday morning to hear the music level blasting out to customers at a volume set on Sunday night, usually by the pit boss or shift manager.

I asked Green to recount some of the sound nightmares he encountered that his product helped fix.

“We had a client in Blackhawk, and they were still getting mailed tapes, cassette tapes. This was around 2010, and they had to pop tapes into the cassette player and play these two- or three-hour loops 24/7. So, they were just banging their heads against the wall. To your point, we had many nightmare scenarios with just no volume control.

“A frustrating regular occurrence was that most of these lists were the same 24/7. We would come in and say, guys, you can’t have the same energy and music playing from six in the morning till 10 o’clock in the morning that you do on a Friday night from six to 10 p.m. It’s a different energy.

“So, those types of occurrences were frustrating for casino operators. A  lot of the feedback that typically comes from casinos was super repetitive playlists, very short playlists. Obviously, no shuffling,

“Customers would say, ‘Hey, we hear this same song every day at 2 o’clock,’ which was a regular occurrence back then.” Green related.

The key
I asked Green about New Level Radio’s approach to demographics and music curation.

His approach is hands-on. He and his team go into a property, figure out who is actually on the floor and when, and build programming that changes with the crowd. Tuesday afternoon regulars aren’t the Friday night crowd, and the music shifts to match. A human curator with a background in radio or the music industry chooses every song, not an algorithm. Green still visits client properties regularly and has personal input on most playlists.

“The great thing about gaming is that most properties have a pretty good analysis of who’s there, and obviously they’re more than happy to share that with us because we’re highlighting who’s physically in their space.

“We always try to mention that a 65-year-old in Arkansas is not the same as a 65-year-old in Colorado or Washington. There are some similarities with music that you can infer and make sure that you have those in there, but there are a lot of differences as well, and especially with corporations who have multiple properties. It’s really important from our standpoint that everything’s curated specifically for the location because that’s the key,” Green said.

Individual curation
With New Level Radio, every property gets its own program. Playlists are built around who is on the floor at different times of day and week, and can shift zone by zone (casino floor, pool, steakhouse, lounge). Palms Casino Resort, for example, runs 50 separate zones.

“Every single zone or area is its own unique ecosystem that our curators schedule uniquely for those areas. So, all pools are a separate program. Obviously, the spas are different programs. Steakhouses are separate programs, and those are individually curated as well, just like we would for the floor, because a steakhouse isn’t going to have the same energy as the casino floor, and it shouldn’t.

“They all need individual curation. We do the same level of service for every zone that we do for the casino floor and our curators do that individually.  What’s the vibe you’re going for at the pool? Are you trying to be a Vegas party pool, or are you trying to be a tranquil, Palm Springs kind of vibe? Those kinds of precursors allow our curators to create great experiences for those spaces,

“We work with every kind of business you could imagine. And our sweet spot is absolutely gaming. We have some of the smallest casinos in the world, and four or five of the biggest ones in the world as well,” he said.

Casino floor and beats per minute
“The casino floor space is unique because most of them are 24/7. You don’t have that closing period where you can refresh and reset. The first thing, the biggest thing, is that everyone gets the same service. We curate whether you’re a restaurant or your casino floor. We curate it based off what the most impact can be. Now, for the casino floor, we get a lot of feedback from guests, as well as feedback from employees, and that’s super helpful for those spaces.

“We really believe in a gradual increase in BPMs throughout the day. It starts to dictate how people feel and the more energy they have as they naturally move throughout the day.

“Also, no filler songs. People don’t come to casinos to hear some ambiguous ‘80s song. That’s just not what people are there for. So, we try to play the hits. We play the hits because that’s what people want to hear. And then finally, just obviously, no sad songs, no songs talking about losing money. We want to keep it upbeat and fresh for everything.”

Keeping on track
The foundation of New Level Radio is the ability to run promotions specific to the property. I asked Green how properties interact with his team to keep a complicated promotional schedule on track.

“We have a process where the casino receives an automatically generated Google Doc form every month. They send us bullet points of what promos are coming up. They obviously send any kill dates that are applicable for those promos. We have a full in-house voice talent team that records the spots. We send them back to the client for approval, and then what’s beautiful is that the technology has everything scheduled automatically.

“When the promo needs to be killed, it just drops off the system. There’s no hands-on management where a pit boss or a manager, an IT guy or AV guy has to go and switch things off or update things. Everything happens remotely due to the technology we have on property. That process flows back and forth. We have a dedicated account rep that handles the information. There is a real person that they can talk to when last-minute things pop up, which in gaming, they always do.

“We have discovered over the years that not only are the promos valuable as an information piece, but it is a true return on investment vehicle. People always say, ‘Well, how do we know?’ It’s a very simple thing. We will make an offer on property that they don’t do anywhere else. For example,  ‘Mention Foxwoods Radio today for $50 off tickets to an upcoming concert,’ and then their ticket system can say, ‘We sold an extra 100 tickets on this offer,’ and they can equate it to tangible ROI,” Green related.

Captive audience
When I asked Green what he sees as the future for New Level Radio, he describes it as a full circle moment. He believes that the availability of multiple media choices today, including social media, mobile phones, and other distractions, gives increasing importance to speaking directly to a captive audience of loyal fans.

“We’re already seeing in our research, plus what our clients are saying, that the importance of the captive audience has never been more important than it is going into the next five or ten years. Because there’s only going to be more distractions. So being able to speak to your guests at their closest point of purchase, whether it’s gaming or anything else, has never been more important.

“Our customers are leaning back into ‘We have this audience here on our property. How do we create experiences for them? How do we create memories?’ I think that’s going to be a big change.”

Human touch
I wondered if AI will become more important to his company, and Green pushed back, saying he believes the human touch is vital.

“I think having a human that can actually pick and choose individual songs is still an advantage because music is emotional. Music is ethereal. It’s everything to people whether you’re in a casino or not. I just don’t know if AI will ever be able to implement the emotional connection to music. I would be surprised if that happens anytime soon,” Green remarked.

Enthusiasm
I asked Green what he thought was the secret to his success.

“The secret to our success has been, number one, everyone that works for us is excited about what they do. And I say this: I’ve never hired any person that’s worked for us based on a skill set that they already have because everything that we do, for the most part, can be taught.

“We hire based on enthusiasm. That would be the first thing. The second thing is understanding that it’s a marathon. Even if you don’t look for the quick hits, the home runs, the overnight successes take years and years.

“We stick to treating all our clients as a true partnership. The biggest feedback we get is that we’re accessible, we’re around, we’re helpful, and I think people appreciate that, especially in a very impersonal business. I just love what I do. I absolutely love the business, and I’m thankful to have a chance to do this for almost 20 years,” Green said.