_______  __   __  ______    _______  _______  ______    _______  ___   _______  ___   _______  _______ 
|  _    ||  | |  ||    _ |  |       ||       ||    _ |  |       ||   | |       ||   | |       ||       |
| |_|   ||  | |  ||   | ||  |    ___||    ___||   | ||  |       ||   | |_     _||   | |    ___||  _____|
|       ||  |_|  ||   |_||_ |   | __ |   |___ |   |_||_ |       ||   |   |   |  |   | |   |___ | |_____ 
|  _   | |       ||    __  ||   ||  ||    ___||    __  ||      _||   |   |   |  |   | |    ___||_____  |
| |_|   ||       ||   |  | ||   |_| ||   |___ |   |  | ||     |_ |   |   |   |  |   | |   |___  _____| |
|_______||_______||___|  |_||_______||_______||___|  |_||_______||___|   |___|  |___| |_______||_______|
_  _     _                                             _  _     _                        
/  | \   |_)     ._ ._  o ._   _     _. ._   _|   |\/| |_) _)   |_) o ._  ._  o ._   _  | 
\_ |_/   |_) |_| |  | | | | | (_|   (_| | | (_|   |  | |   _)   | \ | |_) |_) | | | (_| o 
                               _|                                     |   |          _|

...GO BACK TO MUSIC LAND ?

Hello, Burgercities visitor! Welcome to the page for my Microsoft Windows friendly tutorial on how to rip CDs and get the MP3s for your CD burning pleasure. TDLR: This guide is basically a piracy guide. I totally don't think piracy is okay. I totally don't pirate things. But, if you were going to pirate, just don't tell them I told you how to. Ok, cool. Let's move on.

There are multiple methods of doing this depending on if you want to rip the MP3 files from existing CDs, or if you want to convert and download them. Read down below about both ripping and converting the MP3s, and also how to burn the CDs onto a blank disk using Windows Media Player.

SECTION ONE: ACQUIRING YOUR MP3S FOR BURNING.

PART 1: How to rip MP3s from a preexisting CD.

What you need...

A computer with a disk drive, or an external disk reader.

TIP!: The Dell DW316 Slim DVD Drive is a good external disk reader made by Dell. If you don't have one already, this one is both affordable and good quality. Here's the link to it on Dell's website, and also on Amazon, where it's cheaper.

A computer that runs Windows with the Windows Media Player Legacy installed, NOT the new version of the program. The icon for the Legacy player looks like this: It usually is pre-installed with Windows. If not, you can figure out how to download it HERE on Microsoft Answers forum. Handy!

The CD you want to rip the MP3s from.

And finally: a whole lot of patience, because this process takes a while.

  1. Plug in your disk reader, and then open Windows Media Player Legacy. Once the program is open, insert your disk into the reader. If your reader is built-in to your computer, launch the program before inserting the disk.
  2. Once the disk is inserted, your cursor will show a little CD icon beside it. This means the disk is being read by your computer.
  3. Your screen in the player should now show the contents of the CD, like this:

    The disk I'm using as an example is Slipknot's debut studio album, so the screen will display the title (Slipknot), the artist (Slipknot), the tracks that are on the CD (Labled numerically 1, 2, 3, and so on), and other information too, such as release date and genre. Sometimes there's album art, but not always.
  4. Next step is to tell the program to rip the files. Go ahead and press the "Rip CD" button at the top of the window:

    Before ripping, you can also change some settings in the "Rip settings" dropdown menu:

    Before ripping, you can also change some settings in the "Rip settings" dropdown menu: …such as preferred format, audio quality, auto-eject after the ripping completes, etc.

  5. Now we wait. The ripping process will take a while, but the program will show you percentages and time stamps for each track. The files of the rip will go directly into your "Music", which can be found in your File Explorer.

    Each CD will be ripped into its own dedicated folder that will create itself, and also title itself the name of the album. This makes it a heck of a lot easier to move the albums around and keep them organized.
  6. Once your ripping is done, the program will tell you it's complete, and eject the disk if it was set to auto-eject. If not set to auto-eject, right click the name of the album with the symbols "(D:)" beside it (It should be at the bottom of the left sidebar with a little CD icon) and select "Eject".

All done. Now to the next method... 🏴‍☠️

PART 2: How to convert and download MP3s from YouTube videos.

What you need...

A computer that runs Windows, and is capable of downloading and running downloadable programs.

A YouTube account, or just the links to the videos you want to download audios from.

A browser with the ability to download programs from Github.

And finally: a bit of patience, but not nearly as much patience as when you are CD ripping.

What to do...

So, you may be wondering why we are not just using one of the many website converters online… This is because those are unreliable and have long download times, are unsafe for your computer (malware!), and just kinda suck in general. I found this program through Reddit and it works wonderfully, while also not taking up much space on my computer. It also has capabilities of downloading entire playlists and not just single videos, as well as downloading in multiple formats.

  1. Download the downloader program mentioned above via Github: https://github.com/shaked6540/YoutubePlaylistDownloader
  2. Install the program. Windows will most likely give you a warning about downloading it. Don't worry, it's only because the program is not approved/distributed by Windows. Just click through the popup and allow the download.
  3. After installing, open the program. It will look like this (if you use light mode...)
  4. Now, configure your settings for downloads under the "Options" button to the left of the link input. This is what I have mine set to for the easiest process:

    (Setting your destination folder to your "Music" folder will put the files in the same place that they go to when you rip them from a CD!)
  5. Now, all you have to do is paste YouTube video links of the audio you want to download into the link input section. Like I said before, this downloader can download playlists in bulk and will seperate each song as an individual file. So, making a playlist makes this easier if you are downloading a lot.
  6. Once you paste the link(s), click the "Download" button. Then let the program do it's thing. When it's done downloading, I'd first check if it's in your files, and then you can close the downloader program.

All done. Now it's time to burn a CD...

SECTION TWO: BURNING YOUR MP3S ON TO A CD.

What you need...

A computer with a disk drive, or an external disk reader. See above for the one I recommend.

A computer that runs Windows with the Windows Media Player Legacy installed.

A blank CD. You can buy these at Walmart with different maximum listening minutes and storage capabilities. Standard is usually 700mb to 800mb of storage and 74 to 85 minutes of listening. If you want more storage/time, try using a blank DVD to burn instead.

The MP3 files you want to burn onto the CD.

And finally: a lot of patience, because this process takes about as long as ripping files from a CD.

What to do...

  1. Just like when you rip a CD: plug in your disk reader, and then open Windows Media Player Legacy. This time though, it works better if you insert the blank disk before launching the program. If you launch the program after inserting the disk, it usually tells you to relaunch the program.
  2. Once the disk is inserted, your cursor will show a little CD icon beside it. This means the disk is being read by your computer. Since it's empty, this means the computer is processing how much storage is on the disk.
  3. Now when the program is opened, navigate to the right sidebar that has two menus: Play and Burn. The Play menu will be blank, since this is a blank disk. So, select the Burn menu. The screen will now display the stats for the blank CD.
  4. You can now add songs to the burn list by clicking and dragging them from your library.

    Making playlists is a very easy way to keep your files and your burn lists organized. I have 2 playlists as an example right now: For Dad and For Mama. When you open them, it will show the songs inside.

    To make a playlist…
    A. Click the "Create Playlist" button on the top bar. You will be prompted to add a title, too.

    B. Go back into your library by going under the "Music" category. You can go under Artist, Album, or Genre, but just selecting Music shows you everything. You can also search for songs using the search bar in the top right, by typing artist name, song title, album title, etc.
    C. Click and drag the songs you want into the playlist. You can press and hold the CTRL key to select multiple at once.

  5. Once you have your playlist finished, you can click and drag it from the left sidebar into the right sidebar where it says "Drag items here to create a burn list". Here, you can change the order of the tracks. (You can change them in your playlist too, if you want.)
  6. The list of songs will now display on the screen. The program will tell you how much space is taken up by the files, and how much is left on the disk. It also will automatically split up the files into two disks if you have enough to fill them.
  7. Press the "Start Burn" button that has the little red and white circle. The CD will start the burning process. The screen will display the progress of the burn as it happens.
  8. Once finished burning, the CD should automatically eject. Now you can play it on your CD player.

Okay, you made it! All done. Now you know how to burn CDs.

SECTION THREE: USEFUL CD RESOURCES.

To finish off this guide, here's some useful resources for burning and MP3 collecting.

TheAudioDb.com
https://www.theaudiodb.com/

TheAudioDB is a community Database of all sorts of music artwork and metadata. It also has a free music API. This is where I get art for disks, booklet art, jewel case art, and more. It's a really cool resource just to have even if you aren't burning CDs.

Bandcamp
https://bandcamp.com/

Bandcamp is an online music distributing platform that a lot of artists sell downloads of their music on. If you want to get MP3 files directly from the artists and support them, Bandcamp is a great place to do so. Not everyone sells their MP3 files there, but a majority of small or indie artists do.

FreeMediaHeckYeah
https://fmhy.net/audiopiracyguide

FMHY is a really cool and really huge resource list of places to get free media. Not only do they have a music and audio section, they have other forms of media too, like video/film and literature. There's a ton of helpful stuff there, so feel free to dig through it on your own time.
Specific useful sections...
https://fmhy.net/audiopiracyguide#download-sites
https://fmhy.net/audiopiracyguide#genre-specific

The Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/audio

Who doesn't love the Internet Archive? They have a ton of stuff on here too. If you like weird music that's obscure and free, check out what they've got on there.