They subsequently signed in North America with Columbia Records. Malik was an inaugural member of English-Irish pop boy band One Direction, along with Styles, Tomlinson, Horan, and Payne. Styles came up with band name One Direction, which he thought would sound good when The X Factor announcer Peter Dickson read their name out on the live shows. Recording took place in Stockholm, London and Los Angeles, as One Direction worked with producers Carl Falk, Savan Kotecha, Steve Mac, and Rami Yacoub, among others. After the tour concluded in April 2011, the group continued working on their debut album. During the tour the group performed for 500,000 people throughout the UK.
The same month, the boy band and other contestants from the series participated in the X Factor Live Tour. A book licensed by One Direction, One Direction: Forever Young (Our Official X Factor Story), was published by HarperCollins in February 2011, subsequently topping The Sunday Times Best Seller list. Recording for their debut album began in January 2011, as they flew to Los Angeles to work with RedOne, a record producer. Shortly afterwards it was confirmed that One Direction had been signed by Cowell to a reported £2 million Syco Records record contract. One Direction finished in third place and immediately after the final, their song " Forever Young", which would have been released if they had won The X Factor, was leaked onto the internet.
The group quickly gained popularity in the UK. Simon Cowell later commented that the performance convinced him that the group "were confident, fun, like a gang of friends, and kind of fearless as well." Within the first four weeks of the live shows, they were Cowell's last act in the competition. For their qualifying song at "judges' houses", and their first song as a group, One Direction sang an acoustic version of " Torn". He was eliminated before the final round of the competition, but judges Nicole Scherzinger and Simon Cowell grouped him with fellow competitors Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payneand Louis Tomlinson to form a new act for the remainder of the show, called One Direction. Upon auditioning for The X Factor, Malik stated: "I was looking for an experience". He sang " Let Me Love You" by Mario as his audition song, and was accepted into the next round. In 2010, 17-year-old Malik auditioned in Manchester for the seventh series of reality-television competition The X Factor.