How To Rip A CD With iTunes

You may buy most of your music online these days, but many of us still have a big collection of CDs collecting dust in the cabinet. Here’s how to import those CDs to your computer using iTunes.Putting the music from a CD on your computer – or “ripping”, as it is more popularly called, is very easy with Apple’s iTunes:

  1. First, put your CD in your computer’s CD drive and open up iTunes. It may prompt you to import the CD into your library, in which case you can hit yes and let it go.
  2. If it doesn’t prompt you, look in the left sidebar for a CD icon. Click on it, and you should see the songs on that CD in the main window. Look to the bottom left corner of the window and you should see an “Import CD” button. Click that, and the CD will begin importing your tracks.
  3. You’ll be able to watch its progress from the information pane at the top of iTunes’ window. You can also look at the main pane, where the tracks are listed, and you’ll see a green check mark next to tracks it has finished importing. The track it’s currently importing will have an orange circle next to it.
  4. When it’s done, you’ll hear iTunes chime and you’ll see check marks next to all of your songs. You can now eject your CD, head to “Library” in the left sidebar, and find your newly imported CD in your library. If you have an iPod or iPhone, the album should automatically sync to to your device when you plug your device into your computer.

That’s probably enough for most of you – those tracks will be available in your iTunes library until you decide to delete them. If you ever need to do anything with the files, though – like copy them to a USB memory stick – you can select them in iTunes and drag them out of the iTunes window and onto your desktop or memory stick. To select multiple songs, just hold down Ctrl (on Windows) or Command (on a Mac) and click on the songs you want to copy – it should select all of them at once. Enjoy having your music all in one place!


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


One response to “How To Rip A CD With iTunes”

Leave a Reply