Server Version#: 1.43.0.10492
Plexamp Version#: 4.13.0
I noticed that Plexamp has been triggering my fail2ban setup lately. I took a look through the logs and I see plexamp making API requests to /library/streams/*/levels which are resulting in ‘401 unauthorized’ responses. It looks like they don’t have a token attached:
Mar 17, 2026 23:57:27.477 [0x671fb6c0] DEBUG - Networking: Completed request 105: (GET https://my.server.url:443/library/streams/133996/levels?subsample=128&includeFields=thumbBlurHash&X-Plex-Device-Name=ross-pc) with code 401 (have 91 bytes) in 150 ms.
Mar 17, 2026 23:57:27.477 [Javascript] INFO - Networking: Error parsing JSON from request 105: 401 Unexpected token '<', "<html><hea"... is not valid JSON
Mar 17, 2026 23:57:27.478 [Javascript] INFO - Error loading: get https://my.server.url:443/library/streams/133996/levels?subsample=128&includeFields=thumbBlurHash&X-Plex-Device-Name=ross-pc: HTTP status 401
Mar 17, 2026 23:57:27.478 [Javascript] WARNING - Error loading loudness data for track The Living Tombstone / Animal
Based on the following warning (and looking at the API endpoint for /library/streams/*/levels) this seems related to retrieving loudness data. Plexamp otherwise plays music fine (right up until it triggers fail2ban anyhow) - there are other ‘200 OK’ requests in the logs using tokens as expected, so it seems to be authenticated fine. The web player works and doesn’t generate these 401 errors.
It only happens when music is actually playing through plexamp. I can download my entire library without it triggering at all, but if I start playing music and skip through a few tracks it generates plenty of 401’s.
Note this only occurs on IPs that actually have to authenticate. I have my local network whitelisted for auth, so when plexamp is on the same local network as my server these 401’s don’t happen.
I’ve attached the plexamp and plex server logs. The snippet above is from lines 515-518 in the plexamp logs. The matching response in the server logs is on line 3285-3286.
Plexamp.log (73.9 KB)
Plex Media Server.log (433.6 KB)
