Listin' Up is the largest community-rated audio drama directory — your go-to source for discovering the best audio dramas, radio dramas, narrative podcasts, radio plays, audio plays, actual play podcasts, and musical audio dramas.
Browse 4,000+ shows ranked S through F tier by community ratings across Story, Sound, Performance & Listenability.
Find the best horror audio dramas, sci-fi audio dramas, fantasy audio dramas, comedy audio dramas, mystery audio dramas, TTRPG podcasts, and more — all in one place.
Learn what audio drama is →
The Audio Drama Tier Directory
The community-rated audio drama directory — 4,000+ shows ranked S through F by Story, Sound, Performance & Listenability. Browse by genre, format, and language to find your next obsession.
🚧 We're currently in Beta so some information may be missing or incorrect. Please help us get up to speed by submitting missing shows (via the footer), reviewing shows you've listened to, and suggesting edits through show pages.
—Shows Listed
—Community Ratings
—Members
6Tier Levels
Loading…
⚙ Admin Panel
—
Total Shows
—
Ratings
—
Pending Submissions
—
Members
—
Open Reports
—
Abuse Flags
🛠 Tools
🍎 Bulk Re-Enrich Apple Ratings
Re-fetch Apple Podcasts ratings for all approved shows that have an Apple URL. Fixes any shows saved with incorrect ratings from the old bug. Runs ~1 show/sec to avoid rate limits.
🔗 Link Review Queue
Shows missing Apple or Spotify links. Find matches and approve or skip each one.
📬 Pending Submissions
Auto-Deploy: OFF
When ON, submitted shows are added to the directory immediately and remain here for review.
OFF
Loading…
⚑ Reports & Feedback
Loading…
🚨 Abuse Center
Loading…
Users with open abuse flags, ranked by flag count. Shows rating patterns to help identify genuine bad actors.
Click Refresh to load.
Shows that have received suspicious rating activity — coordinated boosts/drags or high volumes of new-account ratings.
Click Refresh to load.
🔍 Abuse Vectors & Mitigations
🆕 New Account Bomb • High Severity
A brand-new account gives an extreme score (avg ≥9.5 or ≤1.5) within 7 days of creation. Common for creator self-promotion or targeted harassment. Action: Check if account has any other ratings. Ban + nuke if it's a throwaway. Half-weight if uncertain.
🚀 Coordinated Boost / ⬇ Drag • High Severity
3+ accounts under 30 days old all give the same show an extreme score within 24 hours. This is the most damaging abuse type — a creator sharing a "rate us 10/10" link in their Discord. Action: Open Suspicious Shows tab to see the full picture. Nuke all involved ratings and ban the accounts.
🌊 Review Flood • Medium Severity
A user submits 10+ ratings in under an hour. Could be a dedicated fan catching up on a long backlog, or a bot. Action: Check the scores given. If they're all similar and plausible, dismiss. If extreme or all for one show, half-weight or ban.
⚡ Extreme Rater • Medium Severity
80%+ of a user's ratings are extreme (≥9.5 or ≤1.5 average). Could be a genuine fan with strong opinions, or a troll. Action: Review which shows they rated. Consistent extreme scores across many shows is suspicious — half-weight. If all 10s for one show and 1s for competitors, ban.
🎯 Single Show Focus • Low Severity
User's only ever rated one show, and it was extreme. Very common for creators/fans landing from a direct link. Low risk on its own but often appears alongside other flags. Action: Usually dismiss unless paired with coordinated flags.
⚙ Other Risks to Monitor
📧 Disposable Email Accounts
Abuse sign-ups often use temp-mail services. Consider adding email domain blocklisting or requiring email verification before ratings count. Not yet implemented.
🔄 Rating Churn
A user who repeatedly changes their rating on one show (e.g. toggling between 1 and 10) to game the score calculation. The upsert system means their current score is what counts — but watch for users editing ratings frequently.
🤖 Scripted Bot Registrations
Automated bulk account creation + rating. The new-account-bomb and coordinated checks catch most of this. Adding a CAPTCHA to sign-up would reduce it further. Not yet implemented.
🏴 Competitor Targeting
A creator mass-rating competitor shows as 1/10. The extreme_rater check catches persistent offenders, and coordinated_drag catches group attacks. Look for accounts that only rate in one genre with extreme lows.
🎭 Fake Profiles
Accounts created specifically to look legitimate before bombing. The 7-day new account threshold is a baseline — consider raising it to 14 or 30 days if abuse escalates.
🛡 Admin Actions
🚫 Ban User — Sets rating_weight to 0. All their ratings are excluded from score calculations immediately via the weighted trigger. Use for clear abuse.
½ Half Weight — Sets rating_weight to 0.5. Their ratings count half as much. Use for borderline cases where you're not sure.
🗑 Nuke All Ratings — Deletes every rating from the user and bans them. All affected show scores recalculate. Use for coordinated attacks.
Delete This Rating — Removes the single flagged rating and recalculates that show's score. Use for isolated incidents.
✓ Resolve — Marks the flag reviewed and actioned. Doesn't affect the user.
Dismiss — Marks the flag as a false positive. Add a note so future you knows why.
📡 Missing RSS Feeds
Shows with no rss_feed_url or rss_url set. These won't get episode counts, artwork, or scheduled refreshes.
Click "Load / Refresh" to fetch.
✎ Show Editor
Search any show to edit all its details.
🌟 Show Spotlight
Manage the hero banner spotlight. Active queue entries show first; the default spotlight shows when the queue is empty.
Live Now
Loading…
Scheduled Queue
Loading…
➕ New Queue Entry
🎙
Shows "Sponsored" label on widget
This show appears in the spotlight whenever the queue has no active entry. Set it once and forget it.
Loading…
Change Default Show
🎙
✉ Email List
Users who opted in to the newsletter at signup. Download as CSV to import into your email platform.
Loading…
👥 User Management
Loading…
📝 The Listin' Up Blog
News, spotlights, and audio drama deep-dives from the team.
✏ New Post
🎙
Loading…
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Listin' Up — the community-rated audio drama tier directory.
What Is Audio Drama?
An audio drama is a scripted, story-driven production told entirely through sound — voice performances, dialogue, sound effects, and music — with no visual component. Think of it as a movie for your ears. Also called radio drama, radio play, audio play, or audio fiction, they range from intimate one-narrator productions to full cinematic epics with large casts and Hollywood-quality sound design.
Modern audio dramas are distributed as podcasts and span every genre: horror, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, comedy, romance, thriller, historical fiction, and more. If you've ever listened to Welcome to Night Vale, The Magnus Archives, or Wolf 359 — you've listened to an audio drama.
These all describe the same thing — scripted, story-driven audio — just from different eras and communities:
Radio drama / Radio play — The classic term, originating in the 1920s–1950s golden age of broadcast radio. Still used for BBC productions and heritage content.
Audio drama / Audio play — The modern podcast-era equivalent. Full-cast, scripted, produced for listening. This is the most common term used today.
Narrative podcast / Scripted podcast / Fiction podcast — Broad terms used by the podcast industry to describe any story-driven podcast, including audio dramas.
Cinematic audiobook — A single narrator with atmospheric sound and music. Less theatrical than a full-cast drama, more immersive than a plain audiobook.
Musical drama — An audio drama with original songs performed in-character, like a stage musical made for your ears.
Actual play / Real play / TTRPG podcast — Recorded tabletop RPG sessions (D&D, Pathfinder, etc.) edited into a narrative format.
On Listin' Up, we index all of these under one roof — the complete world of audio storytelling.
You're already here. Listin' Up is the largest community-rated audio drama directory, with 4,000+ shows spanning every genre and format. Use the filters on the Directory page to browse by genre, format, tier, year, and language. Every show is ranked S through F tier by community ratings — so you can trust that an S-Tier horror audio drama is genuinely exceptional, not just popular.
Listin' Up is run by Studio Ruckus — audio drama producers and die-hard fans who wanted a better way to discover high-quality shows, find inspiration, and cut through the noise of thousands of podcasts. If it exists, it probably started as a personal problem.
Star ratings alone don't tell you much. A 4.2 on Apple Podcasts could mean anything from "beloved cult classic" to "the creator's family voted a lot." Tiers give you a fast, honest signal — S and A are shows worth clearing your schedule for, B and C are solid picks for genre fans, and D and F are here for completeness. Combined with community scores across Story, Sound, and Voice Performance, you get a real picture of quality.
Each tier reflects the overall quality of a show as rated by the community:
SEssential — Must-listen masterpieces. The gold standard.
AExcellent — Outstanding productions well worth your time.
BGreat — Solid, enjoyable listening with minor rough edges.
CGood — Worth checking out, especially for fans of the genre.
DMediocre — Has some redeeming qualities but significant shortcomings.
FSkip — Not recommended.
And yes — S stands for Super or Special Tier. The best of the best.
Community members rate shows across four dimensions: Story & Writing (script quality, structure, impact), Sound Quality (mix, immersion, consistency), Voice Performance (acting, narration, hosting), and Listenability (pacing, episode length, release cadence). These four scores are averaged together with Apple Podcasts ratings (when available) to produce an Overall Enjoyment score out of 10, which also determines a show's tier.
Ratings & Scores
Before community ratings come in, we pull Apple Podcasts ratings as a starting baseline and use them to set a show's initial tier. This gives established shows a meaningful score right away while the Listin' Up community builds up. Once community ratings arrive they take over fully and the Apple score is no longer used. Shows with no Apple rating and no community ratings start at C tier as a neutral placeholder.
C is our neutral starting point for shows we haven't been able to find Apple Podcast data for yet — it's a placeholder, not a judgment. As soon as community ratings or Apple data arrive, the tier updates automatically. Think of it as "pending review."
You can technically rate any show, but we'd ask you to be honest — ratings are most useful when they reflect real listening experience. Create a free account and hit the ★ Rate button on any show card or inside a show's detail page. You'll score four things: Story, Sound, Performance, and Listenability, each out of 10. These are blended to produce an Overall Enjoyment score that sets the show's tier.
The count is live — check the hero banner on the Directory page for the current number. We're constantly adding new shows and pruning ones that don't meet the 3-episode minimum.
Shows & Submissions
Use the + Submit a Show link in the footer at the bottom of any page. Paste your RSS feed URL first — we use it to auto-fill your title, description, episode count, and artwork. You can also add direct links to Apple Podcasts and Spotify (used for artwork and preliminary ratings), your production company name, platform links, genre, format, tags, and more. Shows must have a minimum of 3 published episodes to be listed. Submissions are reviewed by our team before going live.
Open the show's detail page and click the ✎ Suggest Edit button. You can update the title, description, genres, format, year, production company, platform links, and more. Your changes go to our team for a quick review before going live. For anything urgent, use the ✉ Contact Us link in the footer instead.
The most common reasons are: fewer than 3 published episodes, the RSS feed couldn't be verified, or the content doesn't fit our audio drama focus (e.g. talk shows, interview podcasts, news). Shows with content that promotes racism, bigotry, or harassment are also removed. If you think a removal was in error, use the ✉ Contact Us link in the footer to reach out.
Episode counts, artwork, and "last published" dates are pulled from RSS feeds on a rolling schedule — roughly every few weeks per show. Apple Podcasts ratings are refreshed automatically whenever a visitor views the show. If something looks stale or wrong, use the ✎ Suggest Edit button on the show's page or use ✉ Contact Us in the footer.
Using the Site
Nope — browsing, searching, and filtering are all open to everyone. You only need a free account to rate shows, submit new ones, or suggest edits.
Use the sidebar filters on the Directory page. You can filter by Genre, Format, Tier, Year, Language, and Tags — and combine them freely. The sort buttons at the top let you order by Overall Rating, or drill into individual dimensions: Story, Sound, Performance, or Listenability. You can also sort by Most Rated, Newest, or A–Z. Results load 24 per page with a picker to jump to 36 or 48.
Audio Drama
Immersive, script-based stories featuring full casts, detailed sound design, and music. If narrated, includes only 1st-person, in-character narration.
Narrated Audio Drama
Semi-immersive, script-based stories featuring full casts, detailed sound design, and music. A 3rd-person narrator guides the listener through the story.
Cinematic Audiobook
A single narrator who may also voice characters. Mood is set by atmospheric sounds and music rather than a full production cast.
Musical Drama
Immersive, musical-theater-style stories blending a full voice cast, in-world character-performed music, and full sound design.
Anthology
Independent, self-contained stories within each episode or short season — spanning any genre from sci-fi and horror to comedy.
Improvised
Unscripted narrative fiction created live by performers — no game system, no Game Master, no dice. Pure collaborative storytelling recorded and released as a podcast.
Actual Play
Recorded TTRPG sessions (D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and others) edited into narrative podcasts. A Game Master drives the story; the players are the cast.
It's the date the most recent episode was released, pulled directly from the show's RSS feed. It's a quick way to tell whether a show is still active or has gone quiet. Shows that haven't published in over two years are flagged in red — not abandoned necessarily, but worth checking before you get invested in a cliffhanger.
Click ⚑ Report / Feedback in the top nav. Choose the category that fits — bug, bad link, content concern, suggestion, or other — add your details, and optionally include your email if you'd like a reply. All reports go directly to the admin team. For show info corrections specifically, the ✎ Suggest Edit button on any show's detail page is the fastest route.
Listin' Up is one of the best places to get your audio drama discovered by engaged listeners who are specifically looking for their next show. Submissions are free — just use + Submit a Show in the footer, paste your RSS URL, and fill in a few details. Your show will be searchable by genre, format, tier, and keyword, and visible to thousands of audio drama fans.
Beyond Listin' Up, the audio drama community is active on Reddit (r/audiodrama), Discord servers like Audio Drama Hub, and communities run by production companies. Getting listed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Podchaser also helps with discoverability.