Friends: They’re a wonderful and essential part of life, but sometimes they text you recommending that you listen to a song. This attack against your right to self-determine your listening to can be hard to navigate – that’s why we created this helpful guide on how to politely decline your friend’s song recommendation.

Know your worth.

If you don’t value yourself and your time, then how can you expect your friend to? There’s a reason you don’t want to spend three-and-a-half minutes listening to some random song your friend specifically thinks you’ll like, and that reason is that you only listen to the music that was on the iPod Classic your older sister gave you when she got the Nano, or songs recommended by Spotify because it won’t ask you what you think except to improve its algorithm. Maybe your friend should try being a little more like Spotify!

Be direct.

You want to be polite while you decline your friend’s song recommendation, but you shouldn’t leave any ambiguity or room for misunderstanding. Brushing off a rec with your standard “adding it to the queue!” or “def will check out, thanks!” is only delaying the process. Start with a firm and unequivocal “No.” Then soften the blow with some more positive language such as, “I love the fact that you’re having such a great experience with this song that you wanted to share it with me in the hopes that I would connect to it as much, however I am simply not interested at this time, or ever.”

Remember what you’re fighting for.

If you’re going to go through with declining a personal song recommendation, you need to remember what you’re fighting to protect in the first place. Open your music, search Red Hot Chili Peppers, and listen to “Under the Bridge” for the 300th time in your life. This song came out in 1991 and it still freaking rocks! Why would you listen to something new that may challenge and expand your taste when you could listen to something you’ve heard so many times that it barely even registers in your brain? Why should you be told what to do?!?!

So use these tips to decline song recommendations from friends and before you know it they’ll stop sending them altogether. You’ll be able to listen to the same 5 songs in peace until you get so sick of them that you text a friend, “I hate all my music. Got any recs?” Then they’ll send you a thoughtful and enthusiastic list that, amazingly, you’ll still ignore! Happy jamming.