Create an audio CD

To make your own CD, you need:

  • A disc drive that can burn CDs.
  • A blank CD. If you plan to play the CD on a consumer CD player (not only on a computer), you need to use a blank CD-R disc, not a CD-RW disc.
  • An iTunes playlist containing the songs you want on the CD.
    You can fit about 74 minutes of music (about 20 songs) on a 650 MB CD-R disc. Some discs can contain 80 minutes (700 MB) of music. (You can see the size of the selected playlist at the bottom of the iTunes window.)

When you burn a CD, iTunes automatically adjusts the recording speed to the blank CD’s rating. However, if your blank CD is rated for a slower speed than the maximum speed of your drive, or if you experience problems creating CDs, you may want to change the CD recording speed to match the CD’s rating.

To create an audio CD:

  1. Select or create a playlist containing the songs you want to burn to the CD; make sure the songs you want to include have a checkmark beside them.
  2. Insert a blank disc.
  3. Choose File > “Burn Playlist to Disc.“
  4. Select Audio CD as the Disc Format.
  5. Choose your options:
    • To change the CD recording speed, choose an option from the Preferred Speed pop-up menu.
    • To change the length of the silence between songs, choose an option from the Gap Between Songs pop-up menu.
  6. Click Burn.

It might take several minutes to burn an audio CD. You can cancel the burn by clicking “X" next to the progress bar, but if you’re using a CD-R disc, you won’t be able to use it again.