MP3 To Swf?

I am using a music player that is entirely action scripted to load external sound. The mp3's need to be converted to swf format, which I had to do by hand, but I don't know if I did that correctly because the songs take long to load into the player. I am working on a Mac, so can't download that PC software to convert them. I created an .fla, imported the mp3 (which is a full length song) into the library, added the sound to the timeline and dragged it out to the full length of the song (because the song wasn't playing at full length otherwise). Now the player works fine, but instead of moving onto song # 2, it starts the first song again until you select the second song, which then has to load.

Is there any way to compress the songs further so they load quicker?
What is the best way to create a swf from an mp3? I've got the .fla file set to 21 fps, 16kps. I don't know if that is correct or not.

:: Flash Newbie starting from the ground up....

Thanks for any help anyone out there can offer.