About Leedsista.com
Who are you and what is Leedsista?
I'm Daniel Chapman, aka Moxco/Moscowhite for stupid internet reasons. I'm a writer, of the book 100 Years of Leeds United, the film Do You Want to Win?, and of loads of things at The Square Ball, where I was also editing the magazine for yonks and talking on the TSB Podcast for years.
Leedsista is now the home for all my writing about Super Leeds United and related subjects, where I'll be continuing to chronicle our intensely daft football club week by week the same way I have for more than a decade, maybe doing it even better.
I need your support to keep going, though, so please keep reading below for reasons to join Leedsista.
Why should I register as a free member of Leedsista?
Because if you do, you'll get the full text of every new free article I write — every match report — sent to you in an email, direct to your inbox. It's loads easier than trying to follow along on social media.
You'll also get access to lots of archive posts. I'm gradually bringing all my writing from the last decade to this site, but if it's older than a couple of years, I'll ask you to register for free to read it so I can send you my new stuff as well.
Why should I pay to be a member of Leedsista?
Now we're talking. I'm glad you're interested in this. If people don't pay to read my stuff, I can't keep writing it.
If you like reading what I do, you are heavily encouraged to sign up for one of the paid tiers. £3 a month will do, and you'll get a lot more to read.
What do I get for £3 a month?
Three articles a week, plus the glow of knowing that you're helping to make this happen. It includes the free match reports, plus two paid-members only articles, all emailed to you in full or available to read on the website.
Usually that'll be something about LUFC history in midweek (including my attempt to write about every player since 1992), then an up-to-date-ish essay/column type thing for the weekend. Things might vary, more or less, dependent on fixtures — especially in the god damn Champo — but that's the basic deal: £3 per month, three articles per week.
You can sign up for More to Read for £3 a month by tapping this button, and starting a 10-day free trial.
Has anyone ever told you that you have a nice voice?
Not often, but for £5 a month you can get all the above plus a private and easy to use podcast feed of me reading all my writing out loud to you with my nice voice. I've been doing this for a long time and people seem to like it!
You can sign up for More Listening for £5 a month by tapping below and try that out for 10 days for free.
Birthdays... Christmas... £10 a month? What's that about?
I've tried to find a balance between making my writing accessible, and making a living. I've also learned over the years that different people are willing to pay different amounts for my writing. It's up to you how much you do or don't enjoy what I do, and what value you place on that.
So a lot of stuff — match reports every week — is free, and to read everything I post you only have to pay £3 a month. Hopefully that's affordable for most people.
The biggest newsletter platform around, Substack, won't even allow writers to charge less than £5 a month (they say: 'Good writing is valuable, yet a lot of writers underprice themselves. On Substack, we have a £5 monthly minimum to encourage writers to charge more than they think they’re worth').
— so that's how I've set the price of the More Listening tier. Even if you don't fancy listening to the audio versions, I'd appreciate you joining that tier if you think reading three articles a week is worth £5 a month anyway.
People sometimes say, 'I'd happily pay you more!' so I've made the option available to pay £10 a month or £20 a month if you want to. Because that's ridiculously generous, I've made the rewards faintly ridiculous too — for £10 a month I'll send you a birthday card in the post, for £20, I'll send a Christmas card as well. But these tiers are only there if a) you really, really like my stuff and b) can afford to support me to that extent.
For even more options, you can switch to paying any tier yearly up-front, and get a discount of around 10-20%. You can check out all the options by tapping this button.
More questions:
Can I buy a signed copy of 100 Years of Leeds United?
Yes you can! Just click here to go to my shop page.
All copies of 100 Years of Leeds United — it was a Sunday Times bestseller, don't you know — that you buy from me will be signed. But if you want a personal dedication, you can write that in the 'Instructions' box at checkout — so make sure you fill that in if that's what you want.
Why don't I have a password for my account?
You don't need one!
When you hit 'login', you'll be sent a temporary 'magic' link to your email account. Click that link to log in, and you'll stay logged in for a long while.
This is slowly becoming the hip and cool new way to log in to websites, because it's more secure — if you don't have a password, nobody can steal your password.
You also can't forget your password, which saves a lot of trouble too.
How can I change my account picture?
Your membership profile picture is not set up here, but pulled in automatically from the service at Gravatar.com.
You might have forgotten you have an account there — I did! — it was popular a few years back as a way to have one picture across loads of websites, usually Wordpress blogs.
You can change or delete your picture by clicking here to go to Gravatar.com and logging in with your email address.
How do I use the More Listening podcast feed?
It's easy to add your private Leedsista podcast feed to your favourite apps.
When you sign up, you'll get an email from the podcast service with instructions. You should also receive an email every time I post a new episode, unless you turned those emails off, and they contain the instructions too. There's also a guide with a video here.
Those instructions boil down to: press the 'Listen Now' button in the email, choose your podcast app from the list, then when the app opens, hit the 'Follow' or 'Subscribe' button.
The private feed works in most podcast apps, but not all — significantly, not Spotify. If Spotify is a deal-breaker for you, there is a workaround — see below for info.
These iOS podcast apps allow you to add private feeds:
Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast, Castro
These Android podcast apps allow you to add private feeds:
Castbox, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Podcast Republic, Player FM (register for an account first), Dog Catcher, Beyond Pod, Podcasty, PodKicker
These podcast apps don’t support private podcasts:
Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podcast App, PodcastOne, DoublePod, PodcastHD, Podcast Guru
What if I really, really want to use Spotify?
Spotify generally don't like private, subscribers-only podcasts, because they charge their own subscriptions. But they have been experimenting with allowing some members-only podcast feeds to integrate with Spotify.
One service that integrates is Patreon, where I have hosted the 'Moscowcast' since (checks notes) blimey, 2017. That's the same thing as More Listening — me reading articles out.
Ideally I'd like to move everything over from Patreon to here, but I am keeping it open to give people the option of using Spotify for the More Listening podcasts.
If you go to my Patreon page, there's one tier there available to sign up for. If you join that, you will get the option to add a podcast feed to Spotify and listen that way. You also get a feed that works in the same podcast apps as the regular one. Signing up on Patreon will also create an account for you on this site, so you'll get all the benefits of reading the extra articles, getting them by email, and so on.
There's one important condition I should mention — it's more expensive. I'm asking £6 a month for using Patreon, instead of £5 to join directly here. There are three reasons for this:
- It's extra work — setting this up is a bit of a faff and I use a paid service for it, and then I have to upload the podcast files in different places
- Patreon takes a cut and charges extra fees, so I won't be seeing all of that extra pound
- Spotify kinda sucks with the way it pays artists and has ruined Barcelona's nice shirts, so I don't want to encourage them. But yes I am also a hypocrite and use it all the time as well
I hope that makes sense — drop me a line if you've any questions about it, or just head to Patreon to sign up there.
Can I ask you a question that's not answered here?
You sure can — you can contact me by tapping here. That page also has details of all my social media accounts so you can follow me wherever you are.