How to Burn Music onto a CD

There are many reasons to burn some or all of your music collection onto a CD, including to free up space for the new songs without losing the old ones, making backups of your favorite music and taking your music on the road. Before starting, decide what kind of CD to use -- CD-R or CD-RW. The CD-R only allows you to burn stuff once -- you can't delete files and start over. The CD-RW lets you do it all over again. While this is an advantage, CD-RWs are far more expensive than CD-Rs [source: EZ-Tracks].

Here's how to burn music onto a CD using Windows Media Player:

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  1. Click the Windows Start button.
  2. Point the mouse at All Programs and choose Windows Media Player.
  3. Click Library in Windows Media Player to display all the media in your library.
  4. Select Now Playing List.
  5. Choose Clear List to clear any items from the rightpanel.
  6. Click Now Playing List again and choose Burn List.
  7. Find All Music in the left panel.
  8. Click the plus sign next to the All Music category to expand it.
  9. Expand the Album subcategory to display all the albums in the library.
  10. Select an album. The songs in the album are displayed in the right panel
  11. Hold down the CTRL key while clicking the songs you want to burn onto the CD.
  12. Drag and drop the songs into the burn list at the far right side of the screen.
  13. Repeat steps 10 through 12 until you've added all the songs you want to burn. You can rearrange the order of the songs in the burn list by dragging them up or down.
  14. Insert a blank CD in the CD drive.
  15. Compare the Total Time at the bottom of the Burn List with the CD's total time. Most CDs can hold up to 80 minutes.
  16. Right-click any song you want to remove from the list and choose Remove from List in the popup menu.
  17. Click the down arrow next to Start Burn, and verify that Audio CD is selected.
  18. Click Start Burn. The computer will eject the CD when the process is complete [source: Microsoft].

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