Consumer Confidential: Google Music, iTunes Match, no-job majors

Here's your West-End-girls Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Google has learned to sing. The searchmeister is entering the online music market with a new service that will let users store songs online and listen to tracks on multiple devices. Google has expanded into music, television and movies to bolster sales of devices running its Android mobile software. The company is also seeking rights for its Google+ social-network users to share music with each other. On the eve of the debut, Google reached an agreement with Sony’s music unit. Universal and EMI have already signed on. Songs will cost 99 cents to $1.29, though Google may offer discounts. (Bloomberg)

-- Not to be outdone, Apple has rolled out a new iTunes Match service. For $24.99, iTunes account holders can store their entire iTunes library, plus songs from their CDs, in the cloud that is the Internet. The library contents are then available to listen to on computers and iOS devices, including iPhones. The program differs from Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player because iTunes Match isn't based on uploading your music then listening to it via a Web-based player that streams your songs. Instead, it determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store, which boasts some 20 million songs. The program automatically adds these songs to iCloud. Songs that aren't in iTunes can be uploaded by the user. (Lifehacker)

-- Not all college majors are created equal -- at least when it comes to giving you a leg up in the job market. College majors with high unemployment rates include a variety of psychology degrees, fine arts and architecture, according to Census statistics. Here are the Top 10 majors (or should that be Bottom 10?) for not getting a job: Clinical psychology (19.5% unemployment rate), miscellaneous fine arts (16.2%), U.S. history (15.1%), library science (15%), military technologies (10.9%), educational psychology (10.9%), architecture (10.6%), industrial and organizational psychology (10.4%), miscellaneous psychology (10.3%), linguistics and comparative literature (10.2%). (MarketWatch)

-- David Lazarus

Photo: Google is launching a new music service to compete with Apple's iTunes. Credit: Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

 

United Talent Agency leases former Hilton Hotels headquarters

United Talent Agency has agreed to move its headquarters into the former Hilton Hotels headquarters near Beverly Hills City Hall in one of the region’s biggest office leases this year.

The talent agency, one of the world’s largest, signed a long-term agreement to rent 120,000 square feet. New York developer and landlord Tishman Speyer acquired the former Hilton buildings at 9336 and 9346 Civic Center Drive in January and launched a $30-million makeover of the complex built in the 1980s to make it appeal to prosperous tenants.

United Talent will begin its own multimillion-dollar improvements to its space early next year and move 350 employees there by late 2012, the agency said.  Plans by architectural and design firm Rottet Studio include a 150-seat screening room and other amenities.

The complex will be renamed UTA Plaza.

Magazine publisher Playboy Enterprises Inc. announced last week that it will also move into 45,000 square feet in the former Hilton headquarters, which is now nearly fully leased, Tishman Speyer said. Terms of the leases were not disclosed, but the landlord is asking for about $4 per square foot per month for space in the complex, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group.

The talent agency now occupies 80,000 square feet in Wilshire Rodeo Plaza at 9560 Wilshire Blvd., the former headquarters of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert.

“After 20 great years on Wilshire we are excited to have a new campus that will allow for our continued growth and provide an enhanced environment for our colleagues and clients,” the agency’s board of directors said in a joint statement.

The agency also has an office in New York.

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-- Roger Vincent 

Image: Rendering of UTA Plaza after a planned makeover. Credit: Tishman Speyer

 

Consumer Confidential: Thomas the Tank Engine bought, Harley recall

Here's your maybe-baby Monday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

—Thomas the Tank Engine, meet Barbie. The company behind everyone's favorite talking train, Hit Entertainment, is being purchased by El Segundo's Mattel for $680 million in cash. Mattel already markets many Thomas & Friends die-cast and plastic toys under a license that extends until 2014. Global sales of those toys are more than $150 million. Mattel says the deal will help combine its own global marketing and distribution capabilities with Hit Entertainment's global programming and licensing expertise. For those without small ones at home, Thomas the Tank Engine is a popular British children's television series that has spawned a variety of tie-ins and toys.

—Wal-Mart has your number ... at least when it comes to prices. The world's largest retailer is announcing a new strategy that it hopes will pull in procrastinators early by giving them a big incentive: a guarantee that they'll get the lowest price no matter when they buy during the holiday season. Wal-Mart says it will be matching prices on many of its products. Shoppers who buy something at a Wal-Mart store between Nov. 1 and Dec. 25, but then find the identical product elsewhere for less, can get a gift card in the amount of the difference. The offer excludes merchandise bought on Wal-Mart's website and some other products, such as groceries.

—Heads up, hog riders: Harley-Davidson is recalling about 308,000 motorcycles to fix a switch problem that can cause failure of the brake lights and possibly even the rear brakes themselves. The company says in documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that brake light switches can be exposed to too much heat from the exhaust system. The heat can cause the brake lights to fail, and the problem also can cause fluid leaks and the loss of rear brakes. The problem affects Touring, CVO Touring and Trike motorcycles from the 2009 through 2012 model years.

— David Lazarus

Photo: Thomas the Tank Engine has a new daddy. Credit: BayBritt Allcroft

Recording Academy, which awards Grammys, sells former headquarters

The Recording Academy, the organization that hands out the music industry’s annual Grammy Awards, sold its former Santa Monica headquarters to developers.

Developer Trammell Crow Co. and investment firm Westport Capital Partners bought the unoccupied three-story office building at 3402 Pico Blvd. and two adjacent residential parcels, real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis said.

The price was not disclosed, but Westside real estate experts familiar with the property valued the deal at more than $10 million.

Trammell Crow hasn’t decided exactly what to do with the property yet, Senior Managing Director Brad Cox said, but some kind of residential development is likely.

“It’s a great piece of real estate in Santa Monica, where you [ordinarily] can’t find two and half acres of contiguous space,” Cox said.

The 39,128-square-foot office building constructed in 1969 has been vacant since the Recording Academy moved in 2009 to larger quarters in the nearby Lantana office park, which is home to many entertainment industry businesses.

Trammell Crow may refurbish the former Recording Academy building and rent it to a single tenant while building housing alongside. Or the developer may demolish the office and a vacant 11-unit apartment house on one of the adjacent parcels to make way for a new apartment complex.

“We’re looking at a combination of possibilities,” Cox said.

Development would conform with the city’s recent general plan update, he said. The east Santa Monica neighborhood that was formerly an industrial center is in the path of planned light rail service and is gentrifying.

“It’s turning into kind of a hipster location,” Cox said.

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-- Roger Vincent

Photo: Former Recording Academy headquarters in Santa Monica. Credit: CB Richard Ellis