Why this site exists

Somewhere between the iPod and the algorithm, a small thing disappeared: the act of putting on music for someone. You used to sit down, pick a handful of songs, arrange them in a specific order, and hand the result over. Whoever got it listened the way you built it. Burn CD is an attempt to bring that small, deliberate gesture back — without the blank discs, the optical drives, or the software installers.

What it actually is

Burn CD is a free, browser-based toy for making a virtual mix CD and sending it to someone as a single link. Pick tracks one at a time, watch a faux progress bar crawl while the drive "spins up," scribble a note, and share the URL. Whoever opens it lands on a retro CD-player page and hears short previews of the tracks in the exact order you chose.

Everything runs in the browser. There is no app to download, no account to create, and no payment wall hiding behind a button.

What it isn't

It is not a real disc burner. Nothing here writes to plastic, and it won't help you put audio on a CD-R for your car stereo. If that's what you're after, you want a desktop burner, a USB optical drive, and a blank disc — not this site.

It also doesn't host full songs. Every track on a disc is a short preview streamed from the Apple Music catalog. We're sharing a pointer to music, not the music itself.

Who's behind it

Burn CD is built by a small, independent team that likes nostalgia-driven web toys — small tools that do one specific thing and don't ask for your email. The whole project started as a "wouldn't it be fun if…" and turned into a site anyone can use in under a minute.

The thinking behind it

A streaming playlist is infinite, shuffleable, and forgettable. A burned mix CD had edges — a fixed number of slots, a first track, a last track — and those edges are what made it feel like a gift. We kept the edges on purpose. The constraint is the point.

If that idea resonates, scroll back to the top, click the spinning disc, and make one for someone specific.