CD and DVD burning decline is driven by a trend of business giving users no choice but to play along with smart phone/internet technology the cause of a decline in CD Players and operating system supporting burning music CD's. CD burning is already history as far as businesses is concerned. The smart phone generation has gotten used to the business no choice policy to adapt in doubling their phones as hand held players instead that can be connected into users home entertainment systems at home. In the habitual no choice in business policy users are forced to abandoned CD Players.
The following is now considered dinosaur technology.
Making a copy is copied to the hard drive called rip. Recording from the hard drive to a blank CD is called burn. The beauty of hard drive copies you can use your operating system cut, copy, past and rename system as you normally do with your personal files to organize your music files.
Ultra thin laptops and mini note books don't come with built in CD drives. Alternatively a supplementary external drive is required connected to the standard USB sockets we use typical flash drive memory sticks and printers. Since modern computers are stand along burners no software is necessary so any instillation disc that comes with a burner can be ignored.
Make sure the silver play side hasn't become dull. Media players tend to have trouble ripping. As an insurance carefully wipe the silver side with cotton wool material ( glasses cloth ect ) to a mirror finish before you insert the disc. Don't scourge just polish.
Insert the music CD.
If it plays as soon as you inserted, the auto play feature has been set to automatically play. All the multimedia player controls are there to control it. Click stop and close.
If it doesn't automatically open, you a required to open it manually clicking the player icon in the task bar or dock.
If you're unfamiliar with the operating system features the media player icon  can be identified by the operating system icon identifier. Rest the mouse pointer over each icon you see in the task bar, or dock for a second or two. If nothing there check the frequently used programs list. If not there will be found checking start, all programs, accessories, media player and click will open it. Windows 8 from the start tile icons type media player. Top left corner displays the results. Clicking the media player opens it.
Note the media player icon displays in the task bar next to other icons. If you right click the task bar media player icon displays an option of pinning or unpinning any icon to the task bar you please where you can pin the media player icon to it. Next time when ever you need to open the media player again just click the task bar icon. It will automatically open ready to rip the CD to the hard drive.
The media player will ignore the CD drive opening the operating system music library instead. There will be no rip controls  only the burn to record to a blank disc is displayed on the right. If this happens turn your attention to the left pane clicking the CD drive link. The CD contents displays, Te burn controls change to the rip controls.
The rip program controls are displayed on the left.
Clicking the rip CD button for the first time a copyright dialogue box displays. It won't let you continue until the instruction task is completed. When completed the OK button displays you can click to proceed.
If you observe a red "stop rip" button the auto rip feature is set to rip automatically rip the CD to the hard drive. To stop the processes click it. It will change to "rip CD". You are now on manual control when ever your ready to start ripping. When you're ready will change back to stop rip stand by you can cancel ripping at any time during processing.
Observing the rip setting button in the top menu bar clicking it a drops down a menu where you can set the auto rip, and an auto eject off and on at you desire. The computer will automatically or will not eject according to your setting.
By default media players display ticks in the track tick boxes. Any songs with no ticks will be ignored when ripping. At this stage it is only an option. Click out a tick any song you don't want. Or when you ripped you will find the newly ripped contents in your operating system's library music folder. In windows 7 where all the normal word processing editing options available where you rearrange you play list how you want.
If you have chosen the manual option when ready click the rip CD button.  As you start the processes the player starts one at a time highlighting each track going though every ticked track as it goes. This will take time. A decent number of tracks could take up to five minutes. If no indication of progress don't assume it's not responding. It is working in the background.
Computers being internet oriented may attempt to connect to the internet to download the details of the tracks behind the scenes. If not on line a message box advises you it could not download the details. The media player had titled the ripped folder and songs as unknowns listings the songs in numerical order as it finds them.
Opening in Windows 8 the files displayed the music app icon will open in that program. For some reason Microsoft didn't build in any menu  so will play out of control. There is stop control without shutting down or at lest restarting There is a solution to the problem.
Double clicking the folder won't open in the music app.
Right click any file icon. The right click menu displays
Click open with. Another menu swings out to the right.
Click Choose default program. ( Bottom of the menu ). The list of programs to open with displays
Click Windows media Player. The setting will automatically close
You will have no more problems with the files opening in the music app.
Playing in the media player you now have control. If you wish to listen to all the songs while you work  like a CD player when you open the folder top of the menu displays a highlighted yellow Music tools tab. Click the play all button.
Now all that's left is the burning to a blank processes. Media players tend to group all your Albans into one Album. If you don't want this don't edit in the player. Go straight to the library's music folder opening the album you wish to record to a blank from there.
You will find the same right clicking rename technique we all use to rename our files you can reorganize your play list the way you want before you burn to a blank applies.
The trick to the final burning is in the same highlighting technique we all learnt in batch transporting our files from one folder into another.
Leave this program open minimizing on the desk top.
Open the media player minimizing on the desk top.
In the right media player right pane is the pane you drag you files into and click burn.
Not. A word of caution. If dragging and dropping songs one at a time be careful with your mouse handling habits holding down mouse buttons while dragging and letting go. If you let go dragging from the folder pane to into the burn pane to early you risk damaging a file that won't work as expected. There will be a little red cross. When this happens before you click the burn to disc button you'll need to correct it by going back to the song title effected deleting the title and reinstalling it from the original CD.
Drag over the contents and drop into the media player burn pane you normally do transferring files from one program to another in your own programs.
Turn your attention to the "Star burn" clicking it. It will change to stop burn on stand by you can cancel at any time. Observe the progress monitor. Slow computers will take a few seconds to kick start so don't panic assume it's not responding. It will be working in the background. Once the monitor starts the processes will take time. A decent number of tracks could take up to a few minutes.