I sometimes burn downloaded music to CD. 99% of the time the discs read well. If not I just dump that disc and burn at a slower speed. I think my cd/dvd writer costs the grand sum of £10 or so years ago. These days I tend not to burn discs, rather stream directly to my system. When I do burn CDs it is for the car and then I burn in MP3 format (320/16) so I can get many albums on one CD. High res MP3s are great for the car.
When I need to buy blank CDs I get them from Poundland. :cool: I use to fret getting the 'best' gold CDs - waste of time.