The Stool Pigeon, a bi-monthly free music newspaper, was launched in 2005 by editor Phil Hebblethwaite and designer Mickey Gibbons.

In what was its debut ABC, covering the first six months of 2011, it had an average of 51,750 readers in the UK and Ireland. The magazine is also available in Berlin.

That put it ahead of established titles like Bauer Media's Kerrang!, which had 43,033 readers, up 0.2% on the period and the NME, which lost 9.8% of its ...