About the project
Burn CD Makes Digital Mixtapes Feel Personal Again
Burn CD is a free, browser-based digital mixtape maker. It recreates the small rituals around making a mix CD—searching for the right songs, watching the disc burn, writing on the case, and handing the finished music to someone—without requiring an account or a physical drive.
Make a virtual CDWhy a Virtual CD?
Modern playlists are convenient, but convenience can make a recommendation feel disposable. A mixtape asks for a little more attention. Someone has to choose what belongs, decide what comes first, and think about how the final song should land. Burn CD keeps that act of curation while making the result easy to send as a web link.
The visual experience takes its cues from late-1990s and early-2000s desktop software: a blank spinning disc, a burn wizard, a portable CD player, and a jewel case with a handwritten note. The nostalgia is not decoration around a generic playlist. It is the product's way of slowing the interaction down just enough for the choices to feel made.
How the Music Works
Search results, track metadata, artwork, and available preview clips are provided by Apple's public iTunes Search API. Burn CD does not upload, host, sell, download, or redistribute full recordings. When a recipient wants to hear more, the shared player offers lookup links for Apple Music and Spotify and lets them copy the plain-text track list.
Preview availability varies by song and region and can change when the catalog changes. The virtual CD therefore represents a personal recommendation rather than a permanent audio archive.
What Is Stored
Burn CD has no user accounts and does not create a database record for a shared mixtape. The selected public iTunes track IDs are encoded into the share URL. If the sender writes a note, that note is encoded into the URL too. Anyone with the link can open it, so senders should not include private or sensitive information.
This deliberately small data model makes the tool quick to use, but it also means there is no private library, link-recovery system, or editing screen after a CD has been sent. If a track stops resolving or a link is lost, the sender should create a new virtual CD.
Start with the Songs
If you already know who the mix is for, open the digital mixtape maker. If you want help with the theme, track count, and sequence, read how to make a mixtape online.