How to burn a CD

What burning a CD means

Burning a CD means writing music or files onto a blank recordable disc. A store-bought album is pressed in a factory; a blank CD-R has a layer of dye instead, and the laser in a computer’s disc drive heats tiny spots of it as the disc spins. Those marks are what a CD player reads back. The heat is where “burning” comes from.

A burned CD made the right way, as an audio CD on a CD-R, plays in the same players a store-bought album does: car stereos, boomboxes, kitchen radios and old Discmans. That’s why people still burn them as gifts and for cars that never got Bluetooth.

What you need to burn a CD

• A computer with a CD burner. Most laptops sold in the last decade, including every recent Mac, have no disc drive. An external USB burner plugs in and works the same way.
• Blank CD-Rs. Standard 80-minute, 700 MB discs from a known brand. Avoid CD-RWs for music you want to play in a car. Our CD-R vs CD-RW guide explains why and which blanks to buy.
• The songs as files you own. Tracks bought from a download store (iTunes Store, Amazon digital music, Bandcamp, Qobuz), or ripped from your own CDs. Streaming-service downloads can’t be burned.
• Burning software. It’s already on your computer: the Music app on a Mac, Windows Media Player Legacy on Windows.
• A felt-tip marker for writing the title on the disc afterwards.

How to burn a CD, step by step

These are the steps for burning music to a CD on any computer. The menus differ a little between a Mac and a Windows PC, so we have a separate walkthrough for each: how to burn a CD on a Mac and how to burn a CD on Windows 11 and 10.

1. 01
   Gather the songs as files you own

   Put every song you want on the disc into one playlist in your music app. They need to be files on your computer that you bought or ripped from your own CDs. Streaming downloads from Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited won't burn.
2. 02
   Check the running time

   Keep the playlist under 80 minutes for a standard CD-R. We aim for 79 minutes or less, which is usually 18 to 22 songs.
3. 03
   Put the songs in order

   The playlist order becomes the track order on the disc. Drag songs into place before you burn, because nothing can be moved afterwards.
4. 04
   Insert a blank CD-R

   Use a CD-R, not a CD-RW, if the disc will be played in a car or an older stereo. Close any window your computer opens for the blank disc.
5. 05
   Choose Audio CD and a burn speed

   On a Mac, open the playlist in Music and choose File > Burn Playlist to Disc. On Windows, use the Burn tab in Windows Media Player Legacy. Pick Audio CD as the format and a middle speed rather than the maximum.
6. 06
   Burn and wait

   Start the burn and leave the computer alone until it finishes. A full disc takes roughly 5 to 10 minutes at 8x to 16x. The app closes (finalizes) an audio CD for you at the end.
7. 07
   Test-play and label it

   Play the first and last tracks in a real CD player, ideally the one it's going to. Then write on the disc with a soft felt-tip marker, never a ballpoint pen, and skip sticker labels.

Not sure the playlist fits? Paste it into our playlist length calculator and it will total the running time and tell you how many discs you need. Our page on how many songs fit on a CD has the numbers by song length.

Audio CD, MP3 CD or data disc

Every burning app asks which kind of disc to make. The choice decides where the disc will play.

For a gift, or for any player you haven’t tested, burn an audio CD. It’s the format every CD player was built for. An MP3 CD is handy for a long drive in a car you know reads MP3 discs, and a data disc is for moving files between computers.

Burn speed and older CD players

Your burning app will offer a list of speeds, from 4x or so up to the drive’s maximum (often 24x to 48x). The number is a multiple of real time: at 1x, a 60-minute playlist takes 60 minutes to write.

Does burning at slower speeds help older CD players? It’s a widely followed rule, and a sensible one for a disc headed to an old car stereo or boombox. A slightly slower burn can leave cleaner marks that a worn laser reads more easily. The catch is that modern blanks are made for fast drives, so going all the way down to 1x isn’t necessarily better, and it costs you 80 minutes.

How long it takes to burn a CD

Divide the playlist length by the burn speed. A full 80-minute disc works out like this, before the minute or so the app spends finishing the disc:

Drives rarely hold their top speed across the whole disc, so the fastest settings don’t save as much time as the number suggests. Allow 20 minutes for the whole job, including building the playlist and test-playing the result.

Finalize, test-play and label

Finalizing (also called closing the session) writes the table of contents that tells a CD player where each track starts. Players can’t read a disc that was never closed. The Music app and Windows Media Player close an audio CD automatically at the end of the burn, which is one reason to use them. If you use other burning software and see a “leave disc open” or multisession option, turn it off for music.

Test-play it. Put the disc in an actual CD player, not just the computer, and skip to the last track. The end of the disc is where problems show up first. We test-play every disc we make before it ships.

Label it with a felt-tip marker. On a CD-R the data sits just under the thin label side, closer to the top than the bottom. A ballpoint pen presses into it; a soft permanent marker doesn’t. Skip adhesive labels on discs for the car: a sticker can lift in summer heat and jam a slot-loading player. Put the art on a sleeve or case insert instead. Our free CD case template prints a cover and tracklist that fit a standard jewel case.

No disc drive, or a Chromebook

If your computer has no disc drive, an external USB CD/DVD burner is the simplest fix. It plugs into a USB port, usually draws its power from it, and shows up in Music or Windows Media Player like a built-in drive.

How to burn a CD on a Chromebook: you can’t, in practice. Chromebooks have no disc drive, and ChromeOS doesn’t come with software for burning audio CDs, so an external drive won’t help on its own. Borrow a Mac or Windows computer, or use one of the options in our guide to where to get a CD burned.

No burner, or the songs only live on a streaming app? We’ll burn your playlist to a CD, test-play it, and post it to you.

When a burned CD won't play

A dirty lens is more common than people think in cars that have played CDs for years. If store-bought CDs skip too, the player is the problem, not your burn. Planning a mix rather than just copying an album? Our guide to making a mixtape covers choosing and ordering songs.