iTunes: None of the items in this playlist can be burned to disk

I love iTunes and I have been burning regular cd's using it and that is fine. Now that I have my new head unit for my truck, I thought I would take advantage of its ability to play MP3 cd's. I figured piece of cake right? Wrong! I went into the Burning tab and changed the selection to MP3. Then I went back to my playlist and tried to burn it, I get the message "None of the items in this playlist can be burned to disk." My first thought was, maybe some of my cd's that I imported have DRM on them and that is causing some kind of restriction or something. So I then made a playlist with only songs I downloaded from iTunes. I get the same message. I then went back into the Burning tab, and switched it over to burn a regular cd. Everything works fine. I really want to be able to burn MP3 cd's due to the much higher capacity. Anyone ever experience this problem? Anyone have any ideas how to fix this or get around it? It really aggravates me because here I am, doing this digital music the legal way and then something like this happens. It's not like I have illegal stuff on my computer and that is why it is messing up on me or not allowing me to do this.

Try burning your Mp3 CD as a data cd. Just select data cd under the options/burning tab. Then create a play list and click burn. It should play in a Mp3 player without problem.

I burn AAC discs for my Pioneer head unit all the time without problem.

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that, and it let me burn the disk just fine. One problem though. My Alpine CDA-9853 plays MP3 and WMA, but not AAC.

you have to convert to mp3 first. you're telling it to burn an mp3 cd from aac files. it cant read your mind, and thats the same as asking it to burn an mp3 cd from a txt file. to change all your music to mp3, go to preferences > importing > mp3. select the bitrate you want. now, you can select the tracks in itunes, right click and "convert selection to MP3". this will make a new copy of the songs in mp3 format. you can either keep the AAC files as well, or delete them once you're done (delete them through itunes, not windows explorer). to make that task easier, you can view the filetype by going to edit > view options. check the "kind" box, sort by that column (click on it) select all the AAC files and delete them.

It's doing the conversion now. I'm making it down the entire library. I hope this works. Either way, I will post an update, because I doubt I am the only one that has had or will have this problem.

fyi, you wont be able to convert any songs purchased from itunes music store.

That really sucks.

Prot said:

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that, and it let me burn the disk just fine. One problem though. My Alpine CDA-9853 plays MP3 and WMA, but not AAC.

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You ripped your library to mp3 right? I just stated that I burn AAC files to disc because I ripped my library to AAC. If you ripped your library to mp3 then when you burn a data disc, they will be mp3. You do not need to convert anything and in fact you don't want to. Converting a lossy format from one to another will really impact the quality of the song.

As far as converting songs purchased through Itunes, simply burn them as a regular audio CD and then rip them back into your library in what ever format you desire.

I found this a in thread just a while ago I may try on the purchased songs if what I am currently doing ends up working.

troutbumoh said:

A nice program to have if you have protected itunes files is called Hymn. There is a Java version called JHymn that converts from the protected format to mp3 so you can use the files however you please.

Link to Hymn Website

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cool. you can also burn to audio cd and re-import into mp3, but a program would be much better.

It worked; however, I didn't try that programming hack. The loss in quality was small, but noticable for the non-aac protected tracks. Burning cd's like that and organizing them into folders before burning etc. seems like a lot of hassle for what I really end up with. I decided to go the route I originally intended when I bought my headunit which is get an iPod. I am watching one and I am bidding on one on eBay. I figure a 20Gb should do nicely. I import store bought cd's into iTunes using Apple Lossless which is pretty good. I think hooking an iPod up using Alpine's interface unit will yield the results I am after.

The interfaces that Alpine, Pioneer and Kenwood have out are painfully slow to navigate. They do not work nearly as fast as the click wheel and you will most likely be disappointed with their performance.

BTW, Itunes will organize your music collection for you, and it is very easy to use the interface to search for what you need. Type Ctrl+B to show the browser.