Adele's chart-topping album 21 has topped the global albums chart for a second consecutive year.Overall music revenues were up 0.3% to $16.5bn (£10.9bn) - the first year of industry growth since 1999.
Paul Williams, the head of business analysis at Music Week, said the rise was "very significant".
"After many, many years of decline the graph is finally heading northwards again," he said.
"It underlines the efforts the music industry has been putting in and the results it's now getting in reinventing itself in the digital era."
The IFPI's annual Digital Music Report also showed that digital revenues grew by 9% last year and now account for 34% of total revenue.
Carly Rae Jepsen's hit Call Me Maybe was the best-selling single of 2012, with 12.5 million units sold globally.
Adele outsold her nearest rival, Taylor Swift's Red, by some three million copies.
Former X Factor contestants One Direction had the third and
fourth best-selling albums around the world with their first two records
Up All Night and Take Me Home, with 4.5 million and 4.4 million copies
sold respectively.There were two other British acts in the top 10 - Rod Stewart's Merry Christmas, Baby was at number seven and Grammy winners Mumford and Sons' Babel was at nine.
Gotye's mega-hit Somebody That I Used To Know was the second biggest-selling single globally, with 11.8 million purchases.
