Twitter confirms acquisition of music service We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted announced today that it has been acquired by Twitter, confirming a CNET report that the music discovery service was already being integrated with the microblogging site's music products.

In a tweet, Twitter also confirmed the acquisition.

As a result, Wearehunted.com will shut down and user accounts will be closed, a note on the music site's home page explained.

"While we are shutting down wearehunted.com, we will continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team," Wearehunted.com founder Stephen Phillips wrote in the note.

Terms of the acquisition were not revealed. When contacted by CNET, Twitter declined to offer more details.

Phillips said he couldn't talk about his company's role at Twitter, but CNET reported in March that Twitter had acquired the music discovery service last year and was using its technology to build a standalone music app. A person familiar with the matter told CNET that the app, to be called Twitter Music, could be released on iOS by the end of March.

Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.

American Idol host Ryan Seacrest confirmed the app's existence in a series of tweets yesterday that indicated he was "lovin" using it.

Created by a group of Australian software developers in 2009, We Are Hunted creates a kind of Billboard chart for online music, monitoring popular songs on blogs, social media, message boards, and BitTorrent. Users of the San Francisco-based company's service can stream music, create playlists, and share their favorites on social media.