High School Musical makes all-singing debut.

It has garnered virtually no radio support and its terrestrial debut is still a couple of months away, but Disney's High School Musical is already turning into one of the phenomena of the autumn season.

Despite its only real exposure to date coming via a screening of the movie on satellite/digital channels Disney and Disney Plus One a weekend ago, the soundtrack was yesterday (Sunday) easing its way to the top of the UK compilations chart. With repeated broadcasts on Disney and a screening on either BBC1 or BBC2 in December, it now seems set to replicate its success in the US, where it is at three-times- platinum status with 3m sales and stands as 2006's biggest seller to date.

"We believed that it would work, but it's quite a leap of faith that it would work to this level without all the usual avenues like radio airplay, so early on," says EMI's commercial marketing and catalogue co- managing director Steve Pritchard, whose division is handling the release as part of a licensing deal the major has with Disney-owned Hollywood Records.

EMI initially gave the soundtrack a soft release in July, keen to take advantage of any interest that generated in the UK from the US campaign, where the movie was first aired in January. Over the months that followed, 4,000 units of lead single Breaking Free were sold digitally in the UK, while around 1,100 physical albums were snapped up. "The soft release was about accommodating the word of mouth that we were anticipating," says senior product manager Hikaru Sasaki. "We really didn't do an awful lot in traditional areas to highlight this from a marketing perspective, but it's been on YouTube, it's been on Bebo, and these are areas that reach our target audience of six to 14 [years]."

Around 1.8m viewers tuned in when the movie premiered on Disney and Disney ...