NEW-MODEL BOY BAND

Why Don’t We, a five-member boy band put together by industry veteran Randy Phillips and his longtime partner Dave Loeffler, has taken an innovative approach to career development. A modern-day teen act typically starts out by building a fan base, with touring and sales eventually leading to radio play. The partners have updated that strategy, doing all the groundwork on their own rather than immediately hooking up with a major label.

“Labels will sign an act and spend anywhere from $500,000 to $2 million on producers and songs and remixes,” says Phillips, sitting with Loeffler in a conference room adjacent to Studio A at Atlantic Studios in Hollywood, where their charges are working on a new track. “Then they’ll realize they need a social-media presence to support radio. That takes time; you can’t do it in the three weeks before you impact at radio.”

“I had a whole different mindset,” Loeffler asserts.

Loeffler was once in a boy band himself—E.Y.C., signed to MCA when Phillips worked there—prior to heading Phillips’ management company while the latter ran AEG Live. For the last five years, Loeffler became acutely aware of how kids consume content by watching his two teenage daughters and 10 nieces. He’d long wanted to put together a boy band when the time was right, and the moment arrived last fall, soon after Phillips started his current gig running SFX.

They’d brought in a third partner, Orlando-based tech entrepreneur Steve Miller, founder/CEO of network and content-delivery system Highwinds. “Steve was building a platform for creators to monetize at max profit, and he needed content,” Loeffler explains. “Randy said, ‘Let’s create some musical content.’ And I said, ‘If I’m gonna create content from scratch, I’m gonna do something that will be the most reactive in order to draw people to this platform. That would be five American kids, 15-to-18 years old, who all can sing and play an instrument. That’s how it started.”

“We didn’t want models or buff beasts,” Phillips says of the talent search. “We want-ed kids who knew each other and could become a group.” Loeffler located just what he’d been envisioning with help from a friend who knew the teen online universe inside out. And though his five dream boys hailed from different parts of the country, from Portland to Philadelphia, they’d already become friends while doing digi-tours and Magcon shows as aspiring solo artists.

“They’re all social-savvy artists who know how to connect with their fans online,” says Loeffler, “which is so important to our strategy and how we come up with and release content. These kids had five of their own unique fan bases as individuals already, with maybe 100,000 combined followers. The key was that, when we made the proposal, the five guys decided to unite and said, ‘Why don’t we do this?’—which became the group’s name.”

In another unconventional move, the five youngsters were made partners in Phillips, Loeffler and Miller’s newly formed company. “It’s a whole different business model in a very significant way,” says Phillips, “and it’s one of the reasons the music is so authentic and organic. They help us as much as we help them—because they are their audience. I wish I’d managed companies that work as well as this one does, including the one I’m running now.”

“I wanted to make their content accessible, so I went at it from the standpoint of how I discover music myself,” Loeffler explains. “I use SoundCloud to see what’s hot, what’s cool, what’s bubbling and what’s not in hip-hop and urban, and I decided to take the same approach, but in a pop way, which is through iTunes, Spotify and YouTube.”

Thereupon, Philips recalls, “Dave put them through hard-core boy-band basic training.” They all moved into a house in Beverly Hills, where they strengthened their bond while working up songs and recording them using a portable studio on-site. Hit producer Troy “Radio” Johnson and topliner Candace Pillay were brought in as hands-on mentors and collaborators.

Immediately after they’d written and cut the first song, “Taking You,” Phillips and Loeffler released it through Signature Entertainment, the label they formed specifically for that purpose. The group members’ databases had been moved over to the newly launched band account, and their collective fan base was alerted as soon as the single dropped on Black Friday of last year, with a video uploaded on YouTube right on its heels. From there, the fledgling group began posting weekly offerings without fail, interspersing clever mash-ups of current hits with their new songs.

“We just kept hitting them with good, solid content, and it woke people up,” Loeffler says. It wasn’t long before things started to percolate on the socials. Tickets for Why Don’t We’s first tour sold like hotcakes. “How many acts can make money on the road within three months of forming?” he adds.

Phillips takes it further, describing their strategy of constantly feeding the beast as “the perfect model of the new music industry.”

The group’s analytics on the socials (further ramped up via the enthusiastic support and massive reach of YouTube vlogger Logan Paul), Spotify (where their songs have been streamed 200k+ times a week) and YouTube (21m+ views on current single “Something Different,” 97m on the Paul collab “Help Me Help You”) were so impressive that the majors started sniffing around, but Loeffler was adamant about sticking with their DIY approach and riding out the ever-increasing momentum.

Radio didn’t come into their thinking until the team cut its third EP, containing “Something Different,” which both partners felt was a potential airplay hit. They then “threw a Hail Mary pass,” as Phillips puts it, emailing the track to iHeart’s John Ivey and asking for his feedback. Impressed, Ivey sent the song and several other tracks to around 20 of his programmers. The consensus was that “Something Different” had all the earmarks of a hit, as did “Taking You,” that very first track they'd come up with.

With the balance of power increasingly tilting toward artists and managers, the partners found themselves in the catbird seat. They began “auditioning” labels, as Phillips puts it. In short order they choose Atlantic, whose co-head, Craig Kallman, signed them directly after Why Don’t We performed for him acoustically at the band compound. Kallman, who told the group they were the best boy band he’d ever seen, according to Phillips, reportedly gave them a sweet deal indeed, with a $4m guarantee for two firm and no ancillary rights, as well as creative freedom.

That fourth EP, which they’ve titled Invitation, is nearing completion and is scheduled for release this fall, timed with the group’s first anniversary. It will be Why Don’t We’s major-label debut.