Country Album Chart News: The Week of April 9, 2014: Where It All Began for Dan+Shay and Nickel Creek's A Dotted Line Debut

Dan+Shay debut with a big opening week sales number with their Warner Bros. Records debut Where It All Began. We also see the debuts for Josh Thompson and the Merle Haggard Tribute Album among our rundown this week. Also, We find out where Nickel Creek and Johnny Cash’s latest albums debut.

With 29k fans taking home copies of Where It All Began, Dan+Shay debut at #1 with the album which features “19 You + Me. It’s one of the highest debuts in recent Country music history. Johnny Cash’s Out Among The Stars sits at #2 this week with sales now at 80k in just two weeks on the charts, not bad for an album which was supposedly not good enough to sell in the 1980s when originally recorded. Luke Bryan’s Crash My Party remains in the Top 5 this week and comes in at #3 with sales up 23% over last week (could be from digital sales on Sunday after ACM Awards, we’ll know more about that next week). The album has now scanned (sold) over 1.754 million copies. His good buddies Florida Georgia Line is next with sales for Here’s To The Good Times” at #4. Finally, rounding out the Top 5 is Eric Church’s Gold “The Outsiders,” the best-selling Country album of 2014 so far (and right behind Frozen’s soundtrack album for the all-genre title). He’s scanned 505k copies to date.

Cole Swindell, Blake Shelton, Josh Thompson, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean all score placements in the Top 10 with latest albums.

Sitting at #32 on the all-genre SoundScan chart, Blake Shelton’s Based On A True Story sits at #6 on the Country charts this week with a 100% sales increase over last week and has nearly scanned 1.2 million units sold to date (54 weeks into the release cycle).. Josh Thompson scores a #7 debut with Turn It Up, his sophomore album, an album which sold over 9,000 albums in its first week on the charts. Next, we have the ZinePak from the ACM TV Show (not listed below). it’s sold 9k and has over 31k in 3 weeks on the charts. Cole Swindell sold another 8k to bring his albums ales to nearly 135k while Jason Aldean’s Night Train has sold nearly 1.63m. Rounding out the Top 10 is Luke Bryan’s “Spring Break Like We Ain’t Ever” The digital only EP has moved 109k to date.

Notable albums include Jerrod Niemann, Kacey Musgraves & Keith Urban.

This week’s new notables include last weeks’ high debut, jerrod Niemann’s third album High Noon. He has now sold 21k in two weeks. Next, is Kacey Musgraves with ACM Album of the Year, Same Trailer Different Park. The Album -- which also won a Grammy for Album of the Year -- has sold 393k to date. Keith Urban’s Fuse is back in our rundown and has sold 321k to date while the merle Haggard tribute debuts with nearly 5k sold (it’s at iTunes and Walmart only). Nickel Creek’s return after a decade hiatus, A Dotted Line, sold 27k to give them a Top 10 debut (it’s their first album for Nonesuch Records, too). Finally we have the rundown for the latest albums for Scotty McCreery, Cassadee Pope and Danielle Bradbery below.

Other notable debuts are The Infamous Stringdusters with nearly 1,700k soldo for their Let It Go album and 1,000 fans picked up the latest album from Charlie Daniels Band, Off The Grid, Doin’ It Dylan, a collection of acoustic versions of classic Bob Dylan tunes.

Top 10 Country Albums for The Week of April 9, 2014 with 9 Notable Albums (SoundScan Top 200 Current Albums Chart Placement in First colum, Country Rank in Second)*

*Top 10 Country Album Numbers rounded to nearest thousand, Outside Top 10 rounded to nearest Hundred.