He was born in the Netherlands but also spent some time in Canada and France to pursue education.

He became an active musician around 2007 and to the Once Records label. He released the singles Privilege, Qwerty, Funktion One and Hear My Sound. He went on to do some remixes for Ministry of Sound before working on his 2010 track My Friend, which increased his notoriety due to its success on BeatPort and other DJ charts.

His hit single, Toulouse was released in 2011 and managed to reach the Top Ten on Beatport and stayed there for a reasonable amount of time in 2012. He managed to secure a residency in Ibiza in the year 2012. That same year he managed to hit the number 17 spot on DJ Mag’s top 100 DJs poll.

His 2012 collaboration with Avicii titled I Could Be the One was another big single for Romero. The song charted in more than twenty countries, mostly in Europe. It was particularly successful in the USA where it sold more than 500,000 copies and Denmark where it got more than 3.6 million streams.

Romero has collaborated with Nile Rodgers, David Guetta, Calvin Harris and other notable artists since becoming famous in the electronic music scene.

As of June 2018, he’s yet to release an official studio album. He has opted to release singles, remixes, EPs and compilation albums instead.

On the non-music side, he made an appearance in the 2015 film We Are Your Friends, which starred Zac Efron.

He also hosts a weekly radio show titled Protocol Radio. The young musician is also the owner of a label called Protocol Recordings, which has released music for a large number of artists including Kelis, Bassjackers, Fatman Scoop, Hardwell, NERVO, Calvin Harris and Blasterjaxx to name a few.

Nicky Romero’s name is known amongst electronic music producers for his software plugins. The Kickstart plugin is a side-chain compression effect which is quite popular on Splice due to its simplicity. Another plugin released under the Nicky Romero name is Kick, which as the name suggests is a kick drum synthesizer.

Romero uses a MacBook Pro as his machine of choice. He runs Logic Pro and Presonus Studio One for recording and producing his music. He has also used FL Studio on some productions.

His software instrument collection includes Native Instruments Massive, reFC Nexus 2, Sugar  Bytes Cyclop, u-he Ace, Native Instruments Kontakt, Lennar Digital Sylenth1 and Sonic Charge Synplant.

Software effects processors in his production arsenal include Sugar Bytes Effectrix, Waves plugin bundle, FabFilter Pro-L limiter and Cableguys Halftime.

On the hardware side, he uses various studio monitors such as the KRK VXT8, Barefoot MicroMain35, Genelec 8050A and KRK Rokit 6 speakers.

Headphones he has used include Beat by Dre, Bose QuietComfort15, V-Moda Crossfade M-100 as well as Beyerdynamic DT 990 pro headphones.

Some of the keyboards he has dabbled with include the Access Virus TI2, Moog Little Phatty Stage II, and Roland JP-8000 synthesizer.