Were such a feature implemented we go ditch album thumbnails altogether, and have a nice tight browsing method that utilized tiles for both top and bottom lists.
You seem to be referring to
Categories View, but the idea seems applicable to
Panes View as well. There, it's currently easy to switch between 'List' and 'Album Thumbnails' styles (e.g., using Toolbar buttons). But doing so to get details about a particular album is frustrating—because changing to the List style doesn't retain the current selection (or "take you to the Grouped details list automatically scrolled to the point in the list of the clicked tile"). So I like viewing covers and playing by album, but I invariably find myself wanting details at some point. The way it is now, changing styles to get details is almost as jarring as changing views. It would make a huge difference if the current selection were retained (and the view scroll so that's in view) when changing list styles—in either direction. And yes, if it worked that way, it would make sense to have a thumbnail 'Details' link.
It would also be nice to have a '
Group Thumbnails' style—so that functionality can be used for any
Group By setting. For some applications, I like to group by something other than [Album]. If that's [Artist] (and it often is), the two list styles are reasonably similar. But if it's something else (e.g., [Style], [Year] or some custom grouping field), there is no such similarity. It would be nice to be able to choose a style that's consistent with the grouping used.
The two ideas are unrelated, but I really like the idea of a Panes View that
retains a current panes selection as a default and supports an easy switch in styles for getting details about a selected thumbnail. I would then be able to start with a pleasing thumbnails view and default selection—a point from which I could quickly move on to wide variety of different tasks or browsing activities.