Bauer Media's Kerrang! slipped 27.9% from the same period last year, down to 60,290 copies. Sister titles Q and Mojo also fell year on year - Q was down 13.1%, while Mojo slid 5.1%.
IPC's NME was down 17.4% year on year to 56,284 copies, but fellow stablemate Uncut was the only major music title to show a year-on-year rise, up 1.2% to 86,925 copies.
Paul Cheal, publishing director of NME and Uncut, is undaunted by NME's continued decline.
"I'm not down in the dumps in the slightest," he says. "If the magazine was the only product we had to play with, then I would be, but we also have the website, TV and radio. The most important thing is total brand reach."
Cheal points to two key factors depressing NME's printed circulation - a dearth of new artists and the changing media habits of 15 to 24-year-olds.
Stuart Williams, Bauer Media's publishing director for Q, Mojo, Kerrang! and Empire, is similarly pragmatic about the "perfect storm" in the wider music market, which has taken the wind out of related magazines.
"Q is still the best-quality men's music title in Britain," he says. "The drop in circulation is largely the result of taking CD mounts off the cover; base sales are not down as much as it looks."
Williams expects Q, which is poised for a major relaunch in October, and Bauer Media's other music titles to fare better in the second half of the year, when major pre-Christmas album releases typically attract more readers.
Meanwhile, Bauer's market- topping film title Empire widened its lead over Future's Total Film, posting a 4.4% year-on-year increase to 187,202 copies, against Total Film's circulation of 84,520, down 1.3% year on year. Williams is confident Empire's performance in the next period will be "even stronger".
