Country Album Chart News For April 17, 2013: Brad Paisley Tops Chart; 17 Country Albums In Top 40; Chuck Wicks EP's Big Debut

Thanks to the ACM Awards, 17 of the Top 40 Albums in the United States belong to Country Music Artists. Brad Paisley Leads The Charge with 101,000 Wheelhouse albums sold.

It was neck-and-neck last week to see if Brad Paisley or Paramore would take the #1 Slot on the Top 200 Current Albums chart from SoundScan and with less than 6,000 albums sold being the deciding factor, Brad Paisley stands at #2 behind Paramore’s self-titled album with the second best-selling album in the United States with Wheelhouse. the album sold 101,000 copies last week while Blake Shelton’s Based On A True Story is next with 61,000 copies sold. Eric Church's Caught In The Act: Live follows right behind blake with the sales difference betwen the two on the chart a mere 5 albums. These three artists are 3/5 of the Top 5 with Justin Timberlake the other artist inside the Top 5.

The Band Perry sits inside the Country top 5 with Pioneer moving another 56,000 copies giving the family trio nearly 200,000 sold after just two weeks. they’re followed by Republic Nashville labelmates Florida Georgia Line with their now officially Gold-scanning (already Certified for shipments by the RIAA) Here’s To The Good Times.

Luke Bryan, Eric Church Have Two Albums Inside Country’s Top 10 Albums This week.

The #6 selling album this week, with 26,000 copies sold, is Luke Bryan’s album Spring Break...Here To Party. It has now sold 337,000 units while the star's Tailgates & Tanlines record sits at #8 this week with totals at 1.96 million sold. EMI Nashville labelmate Eric Church sits at #7 with his second album in the Top 10, Chief. Chief was the winner of the 2013 ACM Album of the Year award. Capitol's Little Big Town is at #9 with Tornado and EMI Nashville artist Alan Jackson rounds out the Top 10 with his Gospel album Precious Memories II. Alan’s sold 94,000 copies of this projecty while he’s nearly at 260,000 for last year’s Thirty Miles West album. This means that Capitol/EMI Nashville had each of the #6-#10 albums on this week's SoundScan Top 10 Country Albums chart.

Chuck Wicks Debuts with his Independent EP Rough; Miranda Lambert, Zac Brown Band score sales increases thanks to ACM Awards.

Thanks to the ACM Awards, Miranda Lambert’s 2012 ACM Album of the Year winning Four The Record gained a nice 61% sales increase on the chart to sell 12,000 copies bring sales totals to 796,000 strong. Zac Brown Band scored an increase of 21 % with Uncaged bringing their sales totals to 838,000 while Chuck Wicks breaks into the chart with nearly 7,000 fans taking home his Digital EP (he’s already sold over 20,000 copies of the physical disc to the Salt Life Brand soif that number were added to this sales number, Chuck would have the #6 best-selling country record this week but it’s ineligable for RIAA sales - because brands would then be ‘asked’ to buy copies like the Salt Life Promo all the time to ‘pump up’ album sales). Jake Owen’s Barefoot Blue Night is nearly Gold-scanning with sales over 412,000 copies while Jana Kramer’s self-titled album surpasses the 116,000 sales mark this week.

Next week, Texas Country aritsts Graner Smith and The Casey Donahew Band should debut on this with new projects. Fellow Texas Country act The Statesboro Revue may debut as well.

Top 10 Country Albums for This Week with five Notable Albums (SoundScan Top 200 Current Albums Chart Placement)*

*Numbers rounded to nearest thousandth.