Burning MP3 CDs?

[MarkW19]

I'm trying to burn a CD full of "mp3s", with multiple folders seperating the artists.

But, as most of my music is from the iTMS and therefore in protected .m4p format, the only way to burn an mp3 CD from my files seems to be directly in iTunes, which doesn't allow you to do folders on the CD? Can anyone offer a solution, which doesn't involve laboriously converting all of my files to unprotected mp3s (if this is even possible!) and then dragging onto the CD in the finder?

The reason I need the mp3s in folders is for the stereo in my car, as it can only read mp3s and can go through folders.

Thanks in advance.

 

[theBB]

iTunes does not burn an mp3 CD from protected AAC songs, i.e. the ones you have purchased from iTunes Music Store. You can only get them burned as an audio CD. Then, you need to re-import them as something else, in your case it could be mp3.

The first step of burning an audio CD does not change, but you can use Max from

http://sbooth.org/Max/

to do the reimporting if you don't want your iTunes libraries to get crowded.

 

[MarkW19]

Thanks, I thought iTunes made mp3 CDs from protected AAC's, but it makes sense that it doesn't!

 

[gnasher729]

Thanks, I thought iTunes made mp3 CDs from protected AAC's, but it makes sense that it doesn't!

Unfortunately, iTunes _only_ makes MP3 CDs from MP3s. Nothing else, not protected AAC, not unprotected AAC (that is 99 percent of my collection), nothing but MP3. Another problem is that some MP3 CD players don't like album art and lyrics in MP3s; my cheap player has that problem.

So anything you want on MP3 CDs must be converted to MP3. Most stuff can just be converted (you will end up with two files; original and MP3); protected AAC must be burnt on CD first (but you should do that anyway as a backup) and imported as MP3 from there.

By the way, many DVD players will play MP3 DVDs as well. Just create up to about 4.2 GB of MP3 songs, then set things up to burn an MP3 CD, then insert a blank DVD when you are asked to insert a CD. That will easily give you 90 hours of music on your DVD player. When you are done, the easiest way to delete the MP3s from your library is to sort by "date added". If you don't have any MP3s right now, then obviously the easiest is to convert _everything_ to MP3, and when you're done, delete all the MP3s.