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Apple (AAPL) is now selling about 6.4 million songs per day on iTunes, according to AmTech analyst Shaw Wu. That's up 7.6% from January, when its run rate was about 5.95 million songs per day, according to Wu.

But growth has slowed: That old 5.95 million songs per day average was a 21% increase over the 4.93 million average songs per day that Apple sold from January to July, 2007. So the new 7.6% increase is a smaller bump. (We admit this is an imperfect metric, because Apple doesn't supply sales numbers over regular intervals -- so there's no way to compare similar sales periods, account for holidays, etc.)

That's okay, of course -- we've known that iTunes growth was going to slow down for some time. And iTunes' business has always been ancillary for Apple; the company only keeps about 30% of gross revenues, and at best the business is small contributor to Apple's bottom line. Indeed, Wu calculates today that Apple is bringing in more than $500 million in quarterly revenue from iTunes music sales, "though profit contribution [is] likely modest."

Apple also said today that it's selling and renting 50,000 movies per day through iTunes. At a $6 average price, Wu calculates that Apple's quarterly movie revenue is $27 million. That's growing rapidly, he notes, but still a rounding error.

Big picture: All of this is good news for Apple, which, to quote Wu, uses iTunes as the "glue" to tie together its multiple platforms: Mac computers, iPods, the iPhone, and Apple TV. What about the content providers? That's a different post.

See Also:
SanDisk Shuts Down Would-Be iTunes Competitor Fanfare/TakeTV
Why Blockbuster's Movie Kiosks Won't Fix Blockbuster
What Apple TV Should Be: More Like Boxee