During the It’s only rock and roll, but we like it special music event, as usual, Apple spent some time up front discussing numbers. And as is increasingly usual when it comes to the music leg of their business, those numbers tend towards the HUGE. To date:

• 30 million iPhones sold
• 20 million iPod touches sold

That makes 50 million iPhone OS X platform device on the market, up from 45 million on July 21.

• 75,000 apps in the iTunes App Store
• 1.8 billion downloads (not counting updates)

Still no breakdown of paid vs. free, but up from 3,000 this time last year, and 65,000 and 1.5 billion back on July 14.

In terms of games, compared with other mobile platforms, here’s the library count:

• 21,178 for Apple iPhone/iPod touch
• 3,680 for Nintendo DS
• 607 for Sony PSP

But wait, there’s more…

iTunes and iPod is still doing gangbusters.

• #1 music retailer in the world
• 100,000,000 accounts (credit cards) on file
• 8.5 billion songs sold
• 27 million libraries submitted and analyzed by Genius
• 54 billion songs submitted and analyzed by Genius
• 100 million iPod nanos sold
• 220 million iPods in total sold

What do those numbers look like in the MP3 player space — which everyone including Apple believes is a shrinking business compared to more heavily convergent devices like the iPhone?

• 73.3% iPod
• 17.9% Other
• 7.2% Sandisk
• 1.1% Microsoft

Zune numbers look down from last year, iPod not wildly better. Maybe everyone including Apple is right? Still, even on a downward curve:

• Over 50% of iPod owners are new to the platform