Okay, you’ve located the music you want to add to your collection. Now what? How do you download and burn the music for your personal use? This step by step instruction guide should have you rocking to the beat of your own CDs in no time.

We are going to assume that you have a media player of some type on your computer and that you know how to save and name files. We are also going to assume that your computer has a CD burner.

First, locate the music files you want to download from the Internet. Each site will have a different style, but they are all basically the same. You should see a ‘click to download’ button or something similar when you select your music.

Once you have clicked the download button, you will get a dialog box telling you that you are “about to download the song “this will be the name of the song”, are you sure?, or something very similar to that statement. Click ok or cancel.

You will then get a dialog box asking you if you want to open or save the file. Click on “save” to save the file to your computer. You will then get the “save as” box and drop down to choose where to save the file. Save your music to My Music or create a file. You should also make sure the file name is how you want it to appear as this makes sorting your music easier later.
 
Before you begin burning your music you should make sure you have enough songs to make a CD, unless of course you just want to burn one or two.  You can purchase CDRs that are one time use only, once you record on them you can’t add more or you can purchase CDRWs that are rewriteable and can be used repeatedly.  CDRs protect your music from being copied over.

There is software on the market that is specifically designed for burning music; however, the media player that is on your computer will probably do the job. The steps for each are basically the same.

First, put a blank CD in the CD burning drive.

Open your media player software. You should have a library or see your music files listed. You should also see tabs or tools, one of which will say burn to CD or something similar. Click that tab.

Next, you will be prompted to select the files you want to add to the CD. Depending on the software you are using, you will either see a time remaining or disk space remaining window. This tells you how much time you have left on the CD you are creating. You can keep adding songs until you reach 100%.

Once you have reached full capacity, or have put the amount of songs you want on your disk, click ‘ok’ or burn now, whichever your software prompts you to do. You may also be asked if you would like to finalize your disk. Finalizing prevents more music from being added to the disk later and also makes it more compatible with CD players.

Your computer will now take over and burn your disk in a matter of minutes. It will eject when finished. Your software may ask if you would like to burn another or save the list of music as a playlist. These are personal decisions you can make.

Add a label to your disk and your all set. You can use a permanent marker but you should make sure it is one made for writing on CDs.

Now that you know how to download and burn music you never have to be without a collection of your favorite tunes.