I’ve been using the BBM Music beta for a day or two now, and while it has begun to grow on me, one thing that immediately began to irritate me was the sudden requests to be added to someone’s BBM contact list. BlackBerry Messenger is sacred to me, and my PIN is not something I give out lightly. To have perfect strangers able to invite me with a click disturbed me somewhat, and with invites triggering the same LED as BBMs, I was constantly reaching for my device just to find that it was someone else I didn’t know trying to add me. Don’t get me wrong, I add anyone that requests me on BBM Music, but my contact list for Messenger is limited to those that I want to talk to anytime they have the urge.

Thankfully, as Alex Kinsella instructed me via Twitter last night, it seems that RIM foresaw this issue and built in a handy little option. The only problem is, it isn’t very intuitive to get to, not even located in the options for BBM Music itself. Whether this was an oversight, or the developers just giving us BlackBerry users too much credit, it remains that I can see a lot of people not knowing about this handy little option, so I figured I’d help spread the word.

The option is actually buried in the BBM options menus, in the BBM Connected Applications section. Handy screenshot below:

Click the “Edit” button beside Application Access, and select BBM Music from the list of BBM Connected Applications you have installed. This will get you to the BBM Music Settings screen, and at the bottom you will find a handy little checkbox that says “Ignore invitations to become a BBM contact”. Another handy screenshot:

A quick side note, this works with any BBM connected application. While it’s nice having access to this feature in one location for all your BBM Connected apps, it would be great if RIM added a shortcut to that screen into their applications to make it easier to get to.