Can anyone help me with a music question please?

[thehouseofmirth]

Am a total audio ludite but need to put together some music for DS's birthday party. Have to put it on to CDs as I don't own an iPod etc. My question is, can I download music from the internet? I'm assuming a cd won't play mp3s so what do I do? I have (just acquired ) a Mac btw.

Supplementary question - I think I should join the 21st century & get iPod or similar. Are iPods the best, or something else?

You can download it and burn it onto cd's.

Re. iPods, they're not necessarily the best but if you've got a Mac they're the simplest to use as they use the same software. If you don't want an iPod, I've always found Creative mp3 players v good - decent sound quality, lots of space and cheap

I've got an iPod Nano and I do love it but it's a bit temperamental at times (then again, so am I).

coco, really basic question but where is best place to download and is there a particular format I need to choose?

You would normally download MP3 files and use software to convert them and burn them to CD. Some CD players can play MP3s directly and you get a lot more on each CD that way, but many older ones won't.

As to where to get them there are torrent downloads (free) which you are not supposed to use as it is copyright infringement.

There is GoMusic which is very cheap which may be made illegal one day, but isn't yet.

There are places like Itunes that charge more. Their software for MACs enables you to create CDs according to this page on mac-forums or you can download third party burning software, but I don't know the mac ones off hand.

When picking MP3s the quality varies. You want at least 128 kbs, but 192kbs is better and 320kbs I believe is CD quality. My ears can't hear any better than 192 anyway so I aim somewhere in the middle.

Onagar, thank you! GoMusic is brilliant. 9 cents a go is much better than 99p (especially when I got confused & downloaded Dancing Queen 9 times...)