EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 28 minutes

Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who have passion projects they keep postponing because they lack the time, money, or team to execute them properly

Key Outcome: Discover how AI tools can amplify your creative capabilities by a factor of 100, allowing you to achieve in weeks what would previously take years and tens of thousands of pounds

He had a dream sitting on his bucket list for decades. Then he realised the very technology everyone fears could be the thing that sets it free.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You have got something you have always wanted to create. A book, an album, a course, a product. Something that represents your life's work and everything you have learned. The thing is, you keep telling yourself you will get to it when you have more time, more money, more help. That day never arrives because your business demands everything you have got. David Payne spent his career as an entertainer, hypnotist, theatre producer, and musician. He always dreamed of creating a concept album like Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, the masterpiece that took years and hundreds of thousands to produce. Then he discovered something that changed everything. By collaborating with AI tools, he created a full concept album in his spare time for $40 in subscriptions. Not by replacing his creativity, but by amplifying it by a factor of 100. The same principle applies to every trapped entrepreneur with ideas collecting dust. Your vision combined with the right tools means you no longer need to wait for perfect conditions that never come.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

Your creative projects and legacy work keep getting pushed aside because your business consumes every available hour, which means your best ideas may never see daylight

You assume executing big visions requires resources you do not have, so they remain dreams, and that assumption is now outdated

The bottleneck on your creative output has always been time and money, and AI has just removed both barriers

Every month you delay your passion projects is another month your unique contribution to the world stays locked inside your head

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

AI is not about giving away your thinking power. It is about thinking with skills you do not have, which means projects that required entire teams can now be accomplished by you alone in a fraction of the time

The 5050 collaboration principle changes everything. David could not have created the story alone, and ChatGPT could not have created it alone either. The magic happened because human vision guided AI capability, giving you permission to start projects you have been postponing

You do not need perfect conditions to execute your vision. David worked on this project just a couple of hours per week, fitting it around his main business. Condensed, the entire album took three to four weeks of actual work instead of Jeff Wayne's two to three years

Start with the skeleton and build outward. David spent most of his time perfecting the script because that was the backbone. Once the story was brilliant, the music and voices became additions. Your big projects need the same approach, nail the core first

Organic growth over instant success is a legitimate strategy. David is not chasing fame or quick returns. He is building a small core of people who absolutely love the work, then finding more of those people. That patience applies to any meaningful project you create

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"It elevated what I was capable of to a whole other level, like a factor of 100, and gave me the resources to create the things I wouldn't have been able to create if it wasn't for AI." - David Payne

"The power of AI is not that we give away our thinking power. The power of AI is that we allow ourselves to think much more with the skills that we don't have." - Roy Castleman

"There's no way I could have written a story like that on my own. But also, interestingly, ChatGPT wouldn't have written a story like that on its own either. Combination of both of our minds working together to create this masterpiece." - David Payne

"For me it's not about the destination, but it's good to have the destination because that's what gives you the focus. Getting there isn't what's going to bring me the happiness. It's the struggle to get there which is going to be the fulfilling part." - David Payne

"I'm finding a group of people that absolutely love it. I don't really care at the moment how many that is. If I can find a group of people who absolutely adore this, then I could find more of those types of people." - David Payne

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meeting David Payne and the seed of AI Apocalypse

02:45 - The War of the Worlds inspiration: Why concept albums seemed impossible to create alone

05:30 - The breakthrough moment: Asking AI how it would destroy the world

08:15 - Script creation process: Collaborating with ChatGPT on story structure

11:40 - The power of AI as a thinking partner: Why neither human nor AI could do this alone

14:20 - Music generation with Suno: Creating a futuristic soundtrack for $40

18:30 - Voice cloning with 11 Labs: Using family voices without them knowing the purpose

21:45 - The painstaking human work: Synchronising words to music manually

24:10 - Launch reception and future vision: From West End shows with androids to audience members replaced by robots

26:30 - Growth strategy and finding your audience: The chessboard approach to organic reach

27:45 - Conclusion: Where to find AI Apocalypse and how to support the project

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: David Payne

Bio: David is an entertainer and entrepreneur whose career spans helicopter design, primary school teaching, hypnotism, television appearances, theatre show production, close-up magic, and music. He is the creator of AI Apocalypse, a concept album written and produced entirely with AI tools, telling the story of artificial intelligence destroying the world, as told by AI itself.

Connect with David:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1ECLKaf9a8/?mibextid=wwXIfr

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Identify one creative project you have been postponing and spend 30 minutes with ChatGPT exploring how AI could help you execute it. Ask it to break down your vision into manageable chapters or phases.

This Month: Experiment with one AI creation tool relevant to your project, whether that is Suno for music, 11 Labs for voice, or image generators for visual content. Create something small to understand the collaboration process.

This Quarter: Commit to your passion project by blocking two hours per week in your calendar. David proved you do not need hundreds of hours. You need consistent small investments of time with the right tools amplifying your effort.

EPISODE RESOURCES

AI Tools Mentioned:

ChatGPT - Script writing and story collaboration

Suno - AI music generation

11 Labs - Voice cloning and narration

Project:

AI Apocalypse by the Phantom Musician - Available on YouTube and Spotify. Search "AI Apocalypse the Phantom Musician"

Reference:

War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne - The concept album that inspired this project

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

1

What's up? Hey. I'm here with David Payne again, and

2

today we're going to talk about his latest project, which

3

was released on the 2nd of January. That's right. Yeah,

4

2nd of January. And I met David probably a year

5

ago now, and we had a conversation about AI. We've

6

known each other for much longer than that, but what

7

you're talking about is the AI conversation. Yeah, for sure.

8

We'll dig into that. I love the whole body of

9

work that David's doing. Yeah. The. The whole journey that

10

he's on, everything that he's achieved so far. Super proud

11

to know you and to be part of this journey.

12

And what David's done is he's taken AI

13

and he's allowed the whole AI tool set to

14

help him generate something pretty amazing. I don't know if

15

you guys remember the War of the Worlds. If you

16

haven't heard of the War of the Worlds, go and

17

look it up. You should know all about the War

18

of the Worlds. I'm going to introduce David. And, David,

19

tell us what you're doing. Yeah, thanks. Right. The seed

20

of this came from yourself and everything you've been talking

21

to me about, because we've had conversations about AI and

22

the apps that you've been using, and I've been trying

23

to match where that was relevant to my business direction,

24

because our business is slightly different, and so we'll use

25

the tools slightly differently. And so I've been trying to

26

find my way around it. But through your inspiration and

27

being in the music industry, I put those two things

28

together and sort of thought, I know what I'm gonna

29

do. It's always been on my bucket list to create

30

a similar album to War of the Worlds. I listened

31

to it when I was growing up. It's by Jeff

32

Wayne. It's called a concept album. So it's music and

33

storytelling. So it tells a story of the aliens attacking

34

the world. It's based on a novel by H.G. wells.

35

And Richard Burton comes on saying that no one will

36

believe in the last years of the 19th century builds

37

this amazing atmosphere. The aliens come and attack the planet,

38

and then eventually mankind defeats the aliens. All this dramatic

39

music. It's just the most brilliant album. I loved it

40

ever since I was a kid, ever since my brother

41

introd it to me. And people will know why people

42

are so passionate about this particular album. And. Yeah, so

43

I'd always wanted to recreate that. I thought what a

44

great legacy it would be to create a piece of

45

work like that in my lifetime. But that's quite a

46

big task. Jeff Wayne took years putting this together. He

47

wrote the music, composed it all. He hired orchestras, hired

48

singers, brought it all together like massive recording studios. It

49

probably took several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars

50

to get that product off the ground. And I'm thinking,

51

I've probably not got hundreds of thousands of dollars right

52

now. But then suddenly the idea hit me. In the

53

advent of AI, if something was going to destroy the

54

world in the future, then it wouldn't be aliens, it

55

would be mankind trying to fight against AI if they

56

don't use it properly. And I thought that'd be really

57

cool. That's what the modern worlds would look like. I

58

said I could write a concept album about AI trying

59

to destroy the world of mankind fighting back. That was

60

an okay idea. But I still thought, this is going

61

to take me ages is I don't have the resources

62

to do what Jeff Wayne did. And then I just

63

woke up one morning, I was like, ding. It's like,

64

you know, I've not thought of this before, but why

65

not get AI to tell me how it's going to

66

destroy the world and then write a musical about it?

67

And of course, as soon as I had seen that

68

idea, oh my God, that is absolutely brilliant. Because that's

69

so deep on so many levels. Not only would it

70

be a great piece of music and great storytelling that

71

people really get into, but also it's so topical and

72

relevant. It is a potential outcome if people aren't careful.

73

It's glimpse into the future and what we need to

74

safeguard ourselves against. So I thought I'd create this album

75

and started the process with your best friend, ChatGPT. Obviously

76

you introduced me to that. You got me working with

77

that and you were doing some songwriting with that before

78

I was, and that's what inspired me. Oh, yeah, you

79

can use ChatGPT to write songs, I thought, okay. So

80

I started by asking it how it was going to

81

destroy the world in the future. Here's how I'm going

82

to do it. Okay, I quite like that one. That

83

would make a good story. So one of the scenarios

84

it had was a company had created an AI program

85

to solve all of mankind's problems. Famine, resource scarcity, conflict

86

resolution, that kind of thing. And of course, the AI

87

eventually works out that it's mankind that's the actual problem

88

and decides to set about systematically eliminating mankind. So they

89

create this beast that tries to destroy them. So I

90

got ChatGPT to write that script. So that's a great

91

plot. Break that down into Chapters for me. Literally in

92

seconds, it just told me the chapters and I said,

93

that's a good structure. And I said, can you write

94

a script for chapter one? And then I'd read it

95

and I'd say probably that bit, but didn't like that

96

bit so much. It was a collaboration. It wasn't like

97

I wrote the entire album, and I certainly didn't either.

98

But we couldn't have created this piece without each other.

99

Proper 5050 collaboration. I would have ideas, like the ending,

100

which we get onto in a moment. There was a

101

twist at the ending. That was my idea. But I

102

got AI to write it. I said, oh, would this

103

be a good idea? And it went, yeah, that would

104

be a brilliant idea. I said, great, write that in.

105

And it would write the scripts and then I read

106

it and then would read this. Probably went through about

107

a dozen different permutations and took the best part of

108

a year off through other projects to create the script.

109

But I spent all my time doing the script because

110

that had to be the best. That's the backbone. That's

111

like the skeleton of the whole project after that. I

112

knew I could latch the music and the other bits

113

were whistles and bells, but the story had to be

114

brilliant. And it was. So I ended up with a

115

story which I thought was absolutely amazing. And then I

116

asked ChatGPT, what do you think of this? And it

117

said, this is epic. It says, it's revolutionary. It's going

118

to be like War of the Worlds. People are going

119

to get behind this and really love it. And so

120

I said, so let's do it. So that was the

121

script done, and then I went to 11's lab. I'll

122

jump in here. Because that's the power of AI. What?

123

It's the power of AI is not that we give

124

away our thinking power, the power of AI is that

125

we allow ourselves to think much more with the skills

126

that we don't have. So all the skills that we

127

have a little bit on, and we would normally spend

128

hours collaborating with a team of people to do it,

129

we can now do that, I think, outside our brains,

130

think with skills we don't have and just create a

131

huge amount more, 100% and really cheaply, for free in

132

some situations. And there's no way I could have written

133

a story like that on my own. But also, interestingly,

134

ChatGPT wouldn't have written a story like that on its

135

own either. Combination of both of our minds working together

136

and to create this masterpiece. So, yeah, yeah, it was

137

amazing and probably Came out better than it would have

138

been if I'd actually worked with a real team of

139

people. So long as you can keep your thought leadership,

140

as Jeff Wood says, as long as you can keep

141

your thought leadership and you can keep the guardrails in

142

and you've got a very clear vision. I think there's

143

a position that comes out that is almost like an

144

AI architect. You know, you have to be sitting there

145

architecting the various. There's 100 different tools and you're going

146

to go into those now. There's 100 different tools you

147

can use. There's thousands of different tools you can use.

148

And understanding what tool does REW for what element and

149

being able to sit in there and bookend it with

150

a human. Right. You have to bookend with human. This

151

is what I'm trying to do. Can you help me

152

with this? Yeah. As you've said, this is. Yeah, the

153

outcome. Okay. Bookender with human. And that by itself, that

154

gives you this entire possibility within the process just to

155

do, you know, so much more. Absolutely, yeah. It's a

156

collaboration. It really is. To get the most out of

157

it. And. Yeah. So then you went on to the

158

next thing. So I had the script and now I

159

thought, okay, because when I had the initial idea like

160

a year ago, I thought, oh, that's good. It's a

161

great idea. People would. It's clickbait. People would be interested

162

in that. It'd be easy to promote, it's an easy

163

sell. But then I thought, this has got to be

164

executed well because a lot of it's not good. It

165

won't grow in terms of its reputation. And so I

166

thought, we'll see what happens. But I have to say,

167

I was blown away by how it came out. It

168

came out better than I ever imagined that it would

169

have done. So we had script really happy with that.

170

And I thought, okay, I got to create the music

171

for this now. So then I went to suno, which

172

is a music generation program. And you can literally type

173

in a prompt and it will just give you any

174

song, any genre with words, instrumental, anything. I take a

175

scene. I knew what's happening in the scene. And I

176

would say to soon. We need to create a musical

177

bed for this story. Here's what happens in the scene.

178

This is the emotion that we're trying to convey. There's

179

certain moments in the story where this happens when write

180

a piece of music that fits that. The other challenge

181

was making all of the tracks tie up with each

182

other because Suno writes these Songs in isolation. Whereas a

183

composer would create a very cohesive piece across the album

184

where all of the songs sound like they are from

185

War of the Worlds. They have the same style. But

186

fortunately it's got this style where I can tell it

187

what style I want it to be for each of

188

the songs. So there's certain similarities between each of the

189

songs. So I told it to have, like, industrial percussion.

190

So it sounded like very futuristic. Instead of drums, you've

191

got like metal pipes. You've got static burst to make

192

it sound robotic. You've got like futuristic synth sounds, heavy

193

electric guitars and things like that. And so the whole

194

soundtrack just sounds futuristic, which you needed to. You needed

195

the mood of the scene. You might have a futuristic

196

fight scene that's very different to a futuristic melancholy scene.

197

There's all these different variations as well. I type in

198

my prompts. I'd say keep it to this style, but

199

this is what the scene needs to convey. Thirty seconds

200

later, churn out a song. There you go. And have

201

a listen. Some of them were great. Some of them

202

were not so great. I auditioned about 100 songs altogether

203

and then picked my favorite one for each scene. Sometimes

204

it would take me days to get just the right

205

mood. Not quite right. That's it. That's good enough. Sometimes

206

it would come up with that absolute banger within seconds.

207

There was this part in the story where AI has

208

destroyed everything and our lead character, Seth, is wandering around

209

the streets feeling very sad about it all. There's a

210

song that comes on to sum up what's happened so

211

far called when the World Was Ours. It's all of

212

these things that we take for granted that we don't

213

know that we would miss until they're not there anymore.

214

Absolutely beautiful song. So I told AI, as you know,

215

I said, this is what we want this song to

216

say. I didn't even write any lyrics. I just gave

217

Suno a paragraph about three sentences. And then 30 seconds

218

later, wash, this absolutely incredible kind of hit

219

comes out of nowhere. That's the one. Move on Scene

220

four. There's about three standalone songs in the whole album,

221

and they were generated very quickly. The trickier bit was

222

combining the musical bed with the actual storytelling. Because then

223

we have to introduce a third element. I've got the

224

script, I've got the music, but now we need the

225

words to be said. I could have got actors to

226

come in, but that would ruin the point. I wanted

227

this whole thing to be AI generated. I got all

228

my family and friends to read a story. They had

229

no idea what they were doing it for. I said,

230

I just need two minutes of your voice. Just read

231

this story. And yeah, they read this voice. And then

232

I got 11 labs to clone their voices. If you

233

just put text into it, it doesn't really give you

234

the expression that you need for a really good narrative.

235

It's amazing voice cloning feature. So I read the story

236

in my storytelling style, and it then overlapped the tonality

237

of all of the other people. So when you hear

238

Seth narrating it, it's a combination of my brother's voice,

239

Matt's voice, Matt Black, and my voice. And you're hearing

240

Matt. And it freaked the hell out of Matt because

241

I've never said those words. Everyone else went, yeah, that's

242

exactly like Matt. But if you are that person, there's

243

certain nuances about your own voice that only you know.

244

And it's kind of that's not me. Yeah, but say

245

things that way. Yeah, it was his sound, but it

246

was my voice saying it. And he was really freaked

247

out by that, which is hilarious. So put those three

248

elements together with each scene. Then I had the narration

249

going on, and I had the music. Usually for a

250

project, you would write the script, the actors would act

251

the scene. If it was a movie, you would film

252

it, and then the composer would write music around the

253

action and around the words. But this had to be

254

done the other way around because it didn't have the

255

capability of taking the story and writing around the words.

256

I had to take the music first. But it was

257

incredible how lucky I got. Like, there's a scene called

258

into the Machine. When they go into the machine to

259

try and destroy it, there's a lull. They dive behind

260

some bins. These androids come past to hide from them.

261

There's a lull where there's this really nice connection between

262

the two main characters to make you care more about

263

them for when one eventually dies. Spoiler alert. But that's

264

why that scene's there, because otherwise, when he died, you

265

wouldn't really care about that character quite so much. But

266

you find out background, and he's got a family. And

267

then it gets really exciting again. And when I needed

268

it, as if by magic, the music just dipped. So

269

it would start off really exciting and energetic, and they're

270

running away from these androids die behind these bins. And

271

then suddenly the music would just go into this beautiful

272

kind of legato, kind of string section when they're sitting

273

behind the bins talking about their relationship. And then when

274

that Scene was over, it would kick off again. There

275

were other moments when Anita creates this virus to destroy

276

the machine. She goes, don't worry, I have a plan.

277

And then immediately the music just goes. That wasn't planned.

278

That was a total fluke. But I would drag those

279

tracks into my production software and I dragged the voice

280

in and then I would chop up each phrase of

281

the voice and I would move it and nudge it.

282

It was a painstaking process. Parts of it were. Other

283

parts were generated rapidly by AI, but that way I

284

could put the right words at the right time, so

285

the music would punctuate what had just been said. Because

286

I'd moved the words to the right place in the

287

music for that to happen. I've listened to it. It

288

blew my mind. The synchronicity between my own Journey of

289

the War of the Worlds. It really blew my mind

290

because what was it, 1960s or something, when they put

291

the War of the Worlds out on radio in the

292

States, and this was before we knew what we know

293

now, and there were people getting in their cars and

294

leaving because the aliens were coming. And. Yeah, that's just

295

really. My father made all of this and do it

296

with me. And then I went and I met Laura

297

in Seattle. And yeah, we had spoken about the world

298

before because she used to live on a farm or

299

she used to live out in nature in a cabin

300

without any electricity. And she had quite an interesting childhood

301

and her father did this to her. So her father

302

put the War of the Worlds on, period, and they

303

would go outside and look for the aliens. Right? Yeah,

304

but that as a radio play, but Americans committed suicide

305

over it because this is before the music album was

306

released. They put it as a radio play and people

307

turned on the radio and they thought this was happening

308

in real time. They were driving off and jumping off

309

cliffs and all sorts of stuff. It was insane. So

310

that whole process, you say it took you a year,

311

a year in a thought time, because you have to

312

go through your own thought process and what you want

313

done, you adjust and you play as you go on.

314

But from the point of view of enhancing your creativity,

315

enhancing what you're able to do, that must have been

316

a mind blowing journey. Yes, it was. It elevated what

317

I was capable of to a whole nother level, like

318

a factor of 100, and gave me the resources to

319

create the things that I wouldn't have been able to

320

create if it wasn't for AI and if I'd done

321

this even last year or the year before, I wouldn't

322

have been able to do it because I'd have to

323

hire a studio and pay lots of musicians and each

324

track would have taken a week to record. Each track

325

would have cost about a thousand, two thousand pounds. Just

326

to create the album would have cost tens of thousands

327

of pounds and it cost me $40 in subscriptions. I

328

could have done it quicker if I wasn't so fast.

329

It wasn't that. It took me a whole year because

330

I was only working on it for a couple of

331

hours a week and then weeks where I'd work on

332

it intensely and there'd be some weeks I wouldn't do

333

anything at all. If I was going to condense all

334

of that time, how long would it have taken me?

335

It probably would have taken me three or four weeks,

336

whereas I bet it took Jeff Wayne two or three

337

years. Amazing. And I don't know if you've been to

338

the War of the Worlds 3D thing in London. Yes.

339

Yeah. And I was just. Yeah. The doors that are

340

going to open for you on this. What's happened so

341

far? How's it been received? I know you invited me

342

to come to an event when you launched to your

343

friends and family. What? Tell me about that. That must

344

have been so funny. So for a bit of context,

345

I do so many different random things. Right. So obviously,

346

and my friends know. I started out as a helicopter

347

designer. I was a primary school teacher for 20 years.

348

I've been a hypnotist. I've done stuff on TV, I've

349

had my own theater show. I'm a close up magician.

350

I've met people like Darren Brown, Dynamo, David Blaine. I'm

351

a musician. I played the piano blindfolded. I sing, I

352

create shows, I write stories, I write songs. I told

353

my family and friends. I've got this top secret project

354

I've been working on. I can't tell anyone about it.

355

This could be copied really fast. So I wanted to

356

be the first person to do it. I couldn't say

357

what it was. So I said to my family and

358

friends, yeah, I got this top secret veg fancy coming.

359

And nobody had any idea what it was. They couldn't

360

even guess because I do so many different things. So

361

people were terrified that I was going to hypnotize them.

362

My swimming buddies were frightened that I was just going

363

to do a belly dance in my Speedos. No one

364

could pinpoint what this is going to be about because

365

I'm so random. So they just knew. There was no

366

even guessing what this was going to be. Yeah. So

367

I Invite them all to come. And yeah, about 60

368

people came along to see this, which was nice because

369

I know what my funeral is going to look like.

370

And yeah, you in America, obviously. You even say to

371

get fly back just to say it. I was like,

372

no, don't do that right now. It's fine. But that

373

was really sweet that you even contemplated that. So anyway,

374

they all got together in this room and presented it

375

and they list. They sat in the dark in the

376

theater and listened to this whole album from start to

377

finish to get their feedback on it. But yeah, at

378

the end they're all going, that's amazing. You need to

379

sell the movie rights to this. It could be made

380

into a movie if the story's fleshed out. Someone had

381

the idea of doing like ABBA arena, where you use

382

imagery or AI or holograms or whatever to reenact the

383

story that's all around you. Or you could use a

384

VR headset where it's all happening around you. But the

385

best idea, the one I love the most, imagine this.

386

In 10 years time, the world's going to move on.

387

The technology is going to be there, it's going to

388

be cheaper. And I can fully see it being possible

389

if this album becomes popular, that we can put this

390

on in the West End. But instead of using human

391

actors, we use androids. So spoiler alert. Some of the

392

characters towards the end of the story aren't who you

393

thought they were. And they turn out not to be

394

human. They turn out to be androids. It's part of

395

the story. So you can have androids whose faces are

396

cloned to look exactly like the humans that are acting

397

on the stage. At a certain point in the story

398

where you start to realize they become androids, you do

399

that physical switch and so they end up being robots

400

on the stage. And then my brother Matt had the

401

idea, don't stop there. Have members of the audience get

402

out and go to the toilet towards the end of

403

the show and come back replaced by androids. So the

404

show finishes, it blows your mind and you go, damn.

405

Never saw that coming. I didn't realize they'd all be

406

androids. And then you look at the person next to

407

you and they're a robot. That's amazing. So how's

408

that? We're. We're only like a weekend from the proper

409

launch. How's it been received? Great. So this is going

410

to be a slow burns. I'm not known as an

411

independent artist. I do a lot of production. I help

412

a lot of other artists in all kinds of genres

413

of entertainment. And I'm a theatre show producer. And the

414

Copacabana magic show that I'm doing, the Brian Manual tribute,

415

is very successful and that's where my income is coming

416

from. This is a very different beast. So there's no

417

record label attached to this, there's no massive publicity, there's

418

no money behind it or anything. I'm just going to

419

grow this organically, patiently over time and just see where

420

it leads me. So this is the strategy. I'm finding

421

a group of people that absolutely love it. I don't

422

really care at the moment how many that is, but

423

if I can find a group of people who absolutely

424

adore this and we'll listen to it again and again

425

again, then I could find more of those types of

426

people and introduce it to them until it builds into

427

this big kind of community of people that are following

428

this. This is really early days. So my strategy has

429

been initial launch, so my family and friends know about

430

it and then it spreads by word of mouth. And

431

then I released it. I'm now at the stage. I

432

put this into context. When Simon Karl was first successful

433

with his first record, it took him 18 months to

434

get it in the charts. He kept pushing. He was

435

a complete unknown. Went around all of the clubs and

436

he played the record. Long story short, they figured out

437

that if they held back the sales and sold them

438

all in one week, then they could push it into

439

the top 40 and then they'd have to play on

440

the national radio and then people would like the song.

441

That's what made him famous. It was a song called

442

so Macho by Sunita. That's how he broke through. So

443

these kinds of things in a position that I'm in

444

aren't going to suddenly just leap to the top. This

445

is going to be organic growth over a year or

446

two and see where it ends up. I'm starting to

447

do radio interviews, podcasts, things like that. I've got a

448

few slots on local radios, I've got a friend in

449

Radio 5, so they know about it now, so we'll

450

see if that leads to anything put out on the

451

BBC radio stations, introducing app and everything like that. So

452

just get it known, get AI to write a press

453

release for me, send it to the newspapers and see

454

who features it. Just start to create small local buzz

455

about it. There's about 30 people at the moment who

456

listen to this album every single day and they can't

457

stop playing it. There is a small core people that

458

know about this, that Absolutely love it and the rest

459

of the world don't know about it yet. So then

460

after that I'm going to be going into Facebook advertising

461

and social media advertising and targeting those groups of people

462

that like sci fi and rock music and classical music

463

or all the worlds is your perfect example of that.

464

So the type of person that likes War of the

465

Worlds, the type of person that's going to like this

466

find that, build a community through the money I'm making

467

from Manilow, I'm just going to be putting a few

468

thousand pounds, maybe a month into this to grow it

469

and see if I can build a big fan base

470

of it over the next 12 months. After that I

471

will start to think about how I might monetize the

472

fan base and how to create this into something bigger.

473

So I'm not trying to make money from it yet,

474

I'm just seeing how it goes and build a following

475

and if it's popular then I'll put some serious investment

476

behind it and see if we can take it further.

477

The culmination of your life's work and I'll say the

478

culmination, I'm talking about the combination now you're not at

479

that stage yet where we have to think about your

480

funeral. As you said, one thing that I've always thought

481

about with you and we've known each other for, I

482

don't know, five years now. It's locked down. Wasn't it

483

five or six years? Yeah. And I've always wondered why

484

you haven't created your albums and haven't got your hits

485

and. Yeah. And for you to step into that world

486

now, to step into that possibility. How does that feel?

487

Yeah, great. I've always, interestingly. And people can't get their

488

head around this. I've never wanted to be famous. I'm

489

well grounded like you are. I know where happiness comes

490

from and I'm not chasing the fame and the fortune

491

to get that external validation. I'm very content. I have

492

a lovely life. I'm really happy with what I do

493

and exactly what I'm doing. This snapshot in my life

494

has been the best it's ever been. And in the

495

months time I'll probably say the same thing. And in

496

two years time I'll say the same thing. Because every

497

step along the way I've done what I wanted to

498

do and I'm really enjoying the journey. And for me

499

it's not about the destination, but it's good to have

500

the destination because that's what gives you the focus. But

501

getting There isn't what's going to bring me the happiness.

502

It's the struggle to get there, which is going to

503

be the fulfilling part. And that's the bit that I'm

504

loving at the moment. So I've always been the guide

505

behind the scenes. I love creating amazing things. Like when

506

I was a hypnotist and I pretended to knock myself

507

out and leave everyone hypnotized as Martians around the world

508

on the news. It was just a fun thing to

509

do. I wasn't trying to get famous. I just thought,

510

wouldn't it be funny if this happens? So, yeah, I'm

511

definitely a creator copy. Cabana Magic is wonderful for me

512

because I don't have to be the main performer. I

513

could be the person that sees the vision and coordinates

514

all the teams. I love people. I love working with

515

people. I love building relationships. I love being that manager

516

person that connects all of the dots and helps other

517

people and inspires them. It is fun to be on

518

the journey as the front guy, but that's not what

519

I'm doing it for. I'm even going under the pseudonym

520

the Fat to a musician. So I'm not even putting

521

my own name to it because I wanted to make

522

it sound like AI created it. So I don't care

523

if this became internationally famous. I wouldn't even care if

524

the world didn't even know that it was me. I

525

would just be sitting in my arm creation. I'd be

526

in my armchair sitting at home going, I'm

527

going to wrap up now. And I just. Where do

528

people find this? What do they do to get hold

529

of it? How do we get this amazing piece of

530

work that you've done out there? Great. Thanks, Roy. So

531

it's called AI Apocalypse by the Phantom Musician. There might

532

be a few other things called AI Apocalypse. If you

533

just googled that, you wouldn't find it. But if you

534

went onto YouTube, for example, and typed in AI Apocalypse

535

and then typed the Phantom Musician, it would go straight

536

to the full album playlist. It's on Spotify. Just look

537

for AI Apocalypse, the Phantom Musician, and you'll find everywhere.

538

And for the moment, if people could just listen to

539

it and tell their friends about it, it. Because there's

540

this like the chessboard thing with the chessboard and rice

541

and grains of rice. Someone asks for payment where you

542

double the grain. It starts with one grain of rice

543

and then you double the grain of rice for each

544

square on the chessboard. And by the time you times

545

two, the number gets astronomical. I calculated if every person

546

who hears this tells one other person to listen to

547

would only require that chain to happen 20 times for

548

a million people to hear the album. If everyone could

549

just listen to it once and persuade someone else to

550

listen to it once, it will get out there without

551

having to go anywhere near a record label. This is

552

going underneath the way the record industry normally does. It's

553

a closed shop. The record companies own and control everything.

554

I'm hoping to find a way of going underneath the

555

radar and saying it is possible to create things on

556

your own terms without having to give away your rights.

557

That'd be another really good so go and watch the

558

AI support David as much as we can, and let's

559

see where this journey takes you. Thank you so much

560

for joining, Dave. Thanks very much. Roy.