When YouTube Red launched a year ago, the plan was for the service to grow into a competitor against the likes of Netflix and Hulu. Now, less than a year later, subscriber totals show that YouTube still has a long way to go before the public will accept paying a monthly fee for YouTube.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, YouTube Red had 1.5 million paying subscribers as of late summer, with another 1 million users signed up on a trial basis (and not paying the monthly fee). Those numbers underscore just how difficult it is to convince millions of people to pay for something they’ve had free access to for over a decade. They also reflect the interest level in YouTube Music, which launched last November and…

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