Twitter may be working on a standalone music app, and it could be ready by the end of the month. The rumor states that the company acquired music discovery website We Are Hunted last year, and, according to CNET, it plans to integrate technology from the service into its own music-focused app, which will be called Twitter Music. An anonymous source tells the site that the app will be a music discovery service that will take into account the users one follows on Twitter to form recommendations. Music itself will be streamed via SoundCloud, if artists have uploaded their music there. Otherwise, users will be able to listen to song previews from iTunes. According to the rumor, services like Spotify and Rdio will not be integrated with the app.

The app itself, is said to offer four tabs — "Suggested," "#NowPlaying," "Popular," and "Emerging" — which highlight music recommendations, songs people in your feed are listening to, trending music, and up-and-comers, respectively. CNET notes that We Are Hunted employees have been testing the service for some time, citing tweets with the "#NowPlaying" hashtag, like the one below, which also links to SoundCloud. Neither Twitter nor We Are Hunted have publicly announced an acquisition, but CNET's source says the purchase occurred sometime in the past six months.

Twitter's decision to lean on SoundCloud for music streaming, if the rumors pan out, is a natural choice. The company likely has little interest in making music deals and building a backbone for streaming — instead, with this approach, Twitter will be able to continue to focus on discovery and search, which are central to Twitter's business.

We've reached out to both Twitter and We Are Hunted for comment.

Update: CNET is now reporting that We Are Hunted's service is offline following the report of the acquisition. Visitors to the site are now greeted with a message stating "We Are Hunted is not available at the moment." We have yet to hear back from either company on the report.