Ask A Millennial: What Does It Mean To 'Burn A CD?'

These days, it has become very easy to watch your favorite movies and listen to top songs anytime, anywhere you want. There are music streaming platforms like Spotify where you can listen to your favorite tracks, and you can get a streaming service subscription to watch your favorite movies online. But in the early 2000s, there weren't any online music or movie streaming platforms.

At that time, you had to visit platforms like Napster to download music onto your computer. If you wanted to share that music or any other data with your friend, you needed a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray, which were one of the main data-storing options at that time.

However, unlike modern storage platforms like a pen drive, which you simply plug into your computer and copy files to, you were required to burn the CD to move any data onto it. But what exactly does burning a CD mean? Did millennials actually use fire to burn the CD? Here's everything you need to know.

First off, fire has nothing to do with CD burning. Burning a CD actually means writing data onto a CD or any other discs like DVD and Blu-ray. The process is usually called burning instead of copying because a laser in the CD-R drive uses heat to add the data onto the CD. While Windows Media Player was capable of burning a CD, you also had the option to use third-party software like BurnAware, CDBurnerXP, and ImgBurn.

There are two types of discs—rewritable (CD-RW, DVD-RW) and recordable (CD-R, DVD-R). Generally, recordable discs are cheaper than rewritable discs, and they can only be burned once, meaning once you have added any data onto them, they can't be removed, nor can any new data be added. A rewritable disc could be burned multiple times, allowing you to add or delete data like you do on a USB drive.

That said, discs were used to store all kinds of data in those days, including music, pictures, videos, and even software. In fact, many software experts used to burn a disc to convert it into an installation disk for different operating systems like Windows.

In addition to "burning a CD," "ripping a CD" was also a widespread phrase used in the early 2000s. When you move content from your computer to a CD, the process is called burning a CD, but when you move music or other data stored on a CD onto your computer, the process is called ripping a CD. For instance, if you have some music tracks stored on a CD, then when you rip it, Windows Media Player will compress them and store them in WMA, WAV, or MP3 format on your computer.

With the invention of cloud storage platforms, online streaming platforms, and pen drives, you'll hardly see anyone using a CD or any other kind of disc these days. Because of the lower demand, you'll also not find modern computers or laptops featuring a built-in CD-R drive. All that means is that terms like burning or ripping a CD are ones that you'll rarely hear anyone use, but it's still a good idea to know what they mean in case you come across these millennial terms once in a blue moon.