How to Burn Apple Music to CD Easily (An Ultimate Guide)

Many users still ask: Can I burn Apple Music songs to a CD for offline listening in the car or as a physical backup?

The short answer is: it depends on the type of Apple Music content. Apple currently offers different kinds of music sources, and not all of them are CD-burnable by default. The key issue lies in DRM (Digital Rights Management) and audio format compatibility. CDs only support common formats like MP3, WAV, or WMA, while most Apple Music tracks are protected and encrypted.

Here's a quick overview:

As you can see, most Apple Music songs cannot be burned to CD directly. That's why you need to first remove DRM and convert Apple Music tracks into CD-compatible formats. In this guide, you'll learn how to burn Apple Music to CD step by step using a reliable Apple Music converter, making the whole process simple, fast, and lossless.

What You Need Before Burning Apple Music to CD

Before you can successfully burn Apple Music songs to a CD, there are two essential things you need to prepare in advance.

1. A Reliable Apple Music DRM Removal Tool

As mentioned earlier, Apple Music tracks are protected by Apple's FairPlay DRM and cannot be burned to CDs directly. Therefore, the first step is to remove DRM and convert Apple Music into CD-compatible formats such as MP3 or WAV.

Here, TuneFab Apple Music Converter is required. It allows you to download and convert Apple Music songs, albums, and playlists into DRM-free audio files while preserving original sound quality and ID3 metadata. Once converted, these files can be freely used for CD burning without any playback restrictions.

2. A CD Burner (Software or Hardware)

After conversion, you'll also need a CD burner, which can be either:

• Built-in CD burning software (such as Windows Media Player or iTunes)
• Third-party CD burning programs
• External CD/DVD burners (if your computer doesn't have one)

In this article, after completing the conversion process, we'll walk you through 5 different ways to burn converted Apple Music songs to CD, so you can choose the method that best fits your operating system, tools, and personal preferences. Keep reading to get the full guide.

How to Burn Apple Music to CD (Converting & Burning)

Now all things are ready, and let's learn how to burn CD from Apple Music step by step.

1. Convert Apple Music to FLAC/WAV Before Burning CDs

TuneFab Apple Music Converter is a professional application designed to convert Apple Music tracks to MP3, M4A, WAV, and FLAC common formats, which can be recognized by CDs. Among these formats, FLAC and WAV are the best for preserving lossless sound quality. Except for burning to CD from Apple Music, the downloaded Apple Music songs can also be transferred and played on multi-devices as you like.

As a professional Apple Music downloader for removing Apple Music DRM protections, there are also many other sparkling features that you can explore and utilize.

Now, you can begin the process of converting Apple Music to FLAC/WAV in order to burn the converted songs to CD successfully.

Step 1. First, download and install TuneFab Apple Music Converter on your Windows or Mac. Then, open the program and click on Apple Music. Although logging in is not required, doing so makes the conversion go more smoothly and reliably.

Step 2. Choose the Apple Music songs you want to burn to CD. Add them to the conversion list by clicking the "Add" and "Add to Convert" buttons.

Step 3. Select the output format, bitrate, and sample rate for each song. Click "Apply to Setting" if you want the same audio settings for all songs. To ensure the best quality, choose WAV or FLAC as the output format, with a bitrate of 320kbps and a sample rate of 48000Hz.

Step 4. After completing all settings, click the "Convert Now" button to start converting your Apple Music songs as WAV or FLAC format. Once completed, the files will be stored in the destination folder. Then, you can burn your lossless Apple Music songs to CD.

2. Multiple Ways of Burning CDs from Apple Music

Once you finish downloading DRM-free Apple Music songs on your computer, the next step is to burn Apple Music to CD using disc-burning apps like iTunes, VLC, Burn, Windows Media Player, and ImgBurn. Keep reading to find which one works best to burn Apple Music albums to CD.

1. Burn Apple Music to CD via iTunes/Apple Music (Windows & Mac)

To burn Apple Music to a CD on Windows/Mac, the easiest method is to use iTunes and Apple Music. Both apps are capable of helping you easily accomplish this task without the need for an additional CD burner. In this guide, we'll explore how to burn a CD from Apple Music using iTunes as an example. The process is quite similar when using the official Apple Music app on a Mac. If you need help, you can check Apple's official guide for more info.

Step 1. Open iTunes, create a new playlist (click on File > New > Playlist), name it and then drag and drop these converted Apple Music songs to this playlist.

Step 2. Insert a blank CD disc into the disc drive. Then a pop-up window will tell "You've inserted a CD or DVD". Click OK.

Step 3. Right-click the playlist and select File > Burn Playlist to Disc.

Step 4. Choose Audio CD so that you can play this disc on any standard CD player. Then, click Burn. Then iTunes will start burning all the Apple Music songs in the playlist to the CD.

2. Burn Apple Music to CD via VLC (Windows & Mac)

VLC (VideoLAN Client) is a free and widely-used media player known for its ability to play a variety of multimedia files, including audio and video formats. Its user-friendly interface and additional CD-burning features make it a handy all-in-one solution for media playback and CD burning. Also, it works on both Windows and Mac devices, so you can easily burn CDs from Apple Music downloads on your computer.

Step 1. Insert a blank CD into the disc drive. Download and launch the VLC player on your computer.

Step 2. Click Media in the upper left corner to open a drop-down list where you choose Convert/Save.

Step 3. An "Open Media" window will appear. Click the Disc tab at the top. Check the Audio CD box. Click Browse to select the CD drive. Click Convert/Save.

Step 4. Then, the Convert screen will appear. Click the tool icon to choose MP3 as the desired format and click Save.

Step 5. Click the Browse button to add the folder that stores your converted Apple Music songs. The final step is to hit the Start button to start burning Apple Music songs into a CD.

3. Burn Apple Music Songs to CD via Media Player (Windows)

If you mainly use a Windows PC, there actually is a default Apple Music to CD transferring tool available for you to burn Apple Music to CD without installing other software anymore, which is Windows Media Player. As the software will not be difficult to use, and it is completely free of cost, you can open it and just start burning music to CD from Apple immediately. Now, read the steps and see how to do it.

Step 1. Insert the blank CD. And launch Windows Media Player.

Step 2. Go to the Burn tab. Open the music folder that stores previously converted Apple Music songs, then drag and drop them to the burning list on the right side.

Step 3. Click the "√" icon to open a drop-down list where you can make sure Audio CD is selected.

Step 4. Click Start Burn. Once the burning process is finished, Apple Music songs will be stored in the CD.

4. Burn Apple Music Songs to CD via ImgBurn (Windows)

In addition to using iTunes, there are other professional apps that are helpful when it comes to burning Apple Music to CD on Windows, one of which is ImgBurn which supports lots of audio formats such as AAC, APE, FLAC, M4A, and MP3. Besides CD, you can also burn files to DVD, HD DVD, or Blu-ray on this tool. Moreover, it's totally free to use. Here's how to burn a CD from Apple Music with this free CD-burning program on Windows.

Step 1. Download ImgBurn, get it running, and select "Write files/folder to disc" from the main interface.

Step 2. Click Browse for a folder to import a bunch of Apple Music files at a time. You can save all the songs you want to burn onto a disc in the same folder.

Step 3. Hit the Folder-to-Disc button to start creating your own CD. You will see a pop-up window. Click Yes to continue.

Wait until burning is completed. After that, you can play Apple Music on a CD with your car CD player.

5. Burn CDs from Apple Music Playlist via Burn (Mac)

After downloading Apple Music tracks on your Mac computer using TuneFab Apple Music Converter, there are also other excellent programs to burn Apple Music to CD Apart from iTunes and the default Apple Music app. The app Burn is an easy-to-use tool that can help. Supported by macOS 10.9 or higher, it's safe and open source that offers CD-Text and mp3 tag editing features, definitely a decent choice for CD burning.

Step 1. Run Burn on Mac then you can see the main interface as below.

Step 2. Choose Audio and click the "+" button to add your music files to the program. Next, select MP3 disc or Audio CD as the CD type from the upper right corner, then click Burn to continue.

Step 3. Then a window will pop up to ask you to select the Speed where you can choose Maximum Possible (2X) and click Burn to start burning Apple Music playlists to the CD.

After a few minutes, Apple Music tracks will be successfully added to a CD and you can enjoy Apple Music on any CD player with ease.

Common Problems When Burning Apple Music to CD

When burning Apple Music to a CD, you may run into various issues even after following the correct steps. Most of these problems are closely related to DRM restrictions, incompatible audio formats, or CD burning settings. Below are the most common situations users encounter and why they happen.

● Burn Playlist to Disc Is Greyed Out

This issue usually occurs when the songs in your playlist are still DRM-protected Apple Music tracks. CD burning software such as iTunes or Windows Media Player can only burn local audio files in standard formats like MP3, WAV, or AIFF. If the playlist contains Apple Music streaming songs, cloud-based content, or files that haven't been fully downloaded and authorized, the "Burn Playlist to Disc" option will be disabled automatically.

● CD Player Can't Read the Disc

If your CD is burned successfully but won't play on a car stereo or standalone CD player, the problem is often related to disc format or audio encoding. Data CDs, unsupported file formats, or incorrect burning speeds can all cause compatibility issues. Some older CD players only recognize Audio CDs created under specific standards and may reject discs burned with modern settings or compressed files.

● Burn Failed Error

A burn failed error can happen for several reasons, including corrupted source files, unstable burning software, poor-quality blank CDs, or hardware limitations. In some cases, attempting to burn protected Apple Music files directly can also trigger unexpected failures during the burning process.

FAQs About Burning Apple Music to CD

Q1: Is It Illegal to Burn Apple Music to a CD?

Whether it is legal to burn Apple Music to CD would be based on how you will use the burned CD. As the official also provides a direct way for you to burn a CD from iTunes, it would be totally legal if you only do it for personal use. But pay attention that if you burn Apple Music to CD for any commercial activities without getting permission from the authors of the songs, you will be warned and this can be an illegal action.

Q2: What's the Best Output Format for Burning Apple Music to a CD?

WAV and FLAC are the best output formats because both of them are lossless audio formats. WAV is an uncompressed format, retaining the 100% audio quality. But the size of WAV is considerably large.

In contrast, FLAC is compressed but still lossless, delivering the same sound quality as WAV. It has the advantages of a smaller file size and better tagging support, but it might be slightly less compatible than WAV.

It's important to note that when using TuneFab Apple Music Converter, songs converted to FLAC at the highest settings are 24-bit. When burning a 24-bit song to a CD, the audio quality will be reduced to 16-bit. This is because standard audio CDs (known as CD-DA, or Compact Disc Digital Audio) use a 16-bit depth and a 44.1 kHz sample rate PCM audio format. This is a universal standard, so any audio higher than 16-bit or with a different sample rate will automatically be converted to this format when burned to a CD.

In this case, 24-bit audio files will be downsampled to 16-bit, which may result in a slight loss in quality, especially in terms of dynamic range and detail. However, for most listeners, the difference is barely noticeable.

Q3: How Many Apple Music Songs Can You Burn on a CD?

This would depend on both the file sizes of the songs you want to burn to the CD and the capacity of the disc. For example, a CD of around 650MB storage can keep around 74 minutes of music, or about 150 MP3 files on it. When the disc storage gets larger, it can save more MP3 files for you.

Q4: How to Choose the Right Type of CD to Burn Apple Music on?

Choosing the right type of CD depends on your needs and the capabilities of your CD player. You'll likely want to use a standard CD-R (Compact Disc Recordable) or CD-RW (Compact Disc Rewritable) disc for burning Apple Music. Here are their differences.

• CD-R: They can only be written to once. Once you've burned your Apple Music onto a CD-R, you can't erase or re-write it. However, they are more compatible with a wider range of CD players.
• CD-RW: They can be rewritten multiple times. If you want the flexibility to add or remove tracks from your CD, later on, CD-RWs might be a good choice. But, not all CD players support CD-RWs so compatibility could be an issue.

Therefore, before burning Apple Music songs to CDs, make sure your CD player supports the type of disc you choose. If you create a CD for long-term use and don't need to modify it later, a CD-R is often a safer bet. Double-check the specifications of both your CD burner and CD player to ensure compatibility.

Final Words

The most important step in burning Apple Music to CD involves DRM removal and MP3 conversion processes, which ensures that Apple Music songs become compatible with CD discs. Therefore, if you need to burn Apple Music to CD, you can use a tool like TuneFab Apple Music Converter for these processes. Only after completing these steps can you successfully create a CD from your Apple Music collection. Hit the download button below and start your work!