18m Crime Junkies; a Swootiful social app; de-umming with Spext

• Crime Junkie is celebrating 18 million downloads in the past two months. The true-crime podcast has signed with Cabana, the digital audio business of AdLarge Media, for exclusive ad representation. The podcast has a live tour in June.

• Swoot, a new social podcast player from the founders of HipChat, has been getting plenty of positive reviews, like this from The Verge; we mentioned it last week, but clearly it would be wrong of us to recommend you all sign up and listen to the Podnews podcast in Swoot, so we’ll not do that.

• We discover Spext, an automatic transcription and voice editing tool. Here’s a video of someone removing the “ums” in a podcast.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 12 2023

• If you’d like to download apps geolocked to other countries on an iPhone, here’s a helpful guide from Gadgethacks. If you own an Android phone, it’s easier - use a trusted APK mirror like, um, APK mirror, and download the file to install it on your device. (Check your local laws first for both of these.)

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Barron’s Online covers How Podcasting Became a Big Business.

• Duolingo Spanish Podcast es un podcast bilingüe que tiene como objetivo enseñar español a auditores de habla inglesa. En cada episodio, dos narradores cuentan una historia real. El protagonista habla español (simplificado para el nivel intermedio) y la anfitriona habla en inglés. Adonde Media are looking for story pitches: you need to be a native Spanish speaker, and get your proposal to them by the end of April 28th.

  • The company also highlights Argentina’s Parque Podcast network, which has over twenty shows, in a blog post.

• The Sydney Morning Herald has reviewed the RØDECaster Pro.

• The team behind Nancy, WNYC’s popular LGBTQ+ podcast, visited Florida State University.

Podcasts

Leo Laporte is the guest in The Upgrade from Lifehacker this week. (At time of writing, it hadn’t made it to the official feed.)

New this week, CSR of One features inspiring people who are making strides outside their chosen careers through social and charitable initiatives, from an award-winning chef setting up a school in Zanzibar to an accomplished diver removing plastic from Dubai’s waters. (Amaeya FM / Podiant)
Nouveau Monde is the first native podcast from France Info, focusing on new technology. The 30-minute podcast is a spinoff from a four-minute feature aired on the station on Saturdays.