There's no good way to do this at the moment. Here's a long thread discussing it and ideas around the problem:
resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php ... mat+regexp
If you have just Music -> Albums -> Song.mp3 -- i.e. all albums in one place and no Artist sub-directories -- then you can cheat by setting the Albums & all sub-folders to use Detail, then creating a button, style or layout which takes you to the Albums folder using Thumbnails mode.
(i.e. If you go to Albums by navigating normally it will show as Details, but you navigate to it via a button/style/layout instead which will override the view mode for just that directory.)
That's no use if you have an Artists level in your hierarchy, though.
See the Folder Formats FAQ, and look at what each of the actions you described does as a result.
If you save a format for My Music that applies to all subfolders then you'll see you only add one folder format to the list in Preferences. It's for My Music (of course) and it has the Use as the default format for all sub-folders checkbox set.
If you then save (update) the format for My Music again, but for that folder only, then you will overwrite the My Music format, this time without that checkbox set.