Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

How glad BoomTown was to finally see Jerry Yang up close and personal, after our valiant but futile efforts to get near the Yahoo co-founder and CEO in 2007.

No, we’re not stalking him in a restraining-order kind of way, although I did stake a claim to a front-row seat in the intimate theater at the Las Vegas Hilton for his keynote this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, where Yang couldn’t help but see me.

Like he cared!

Not at all, as he was riveted to delivering his shtick about Yahoo’s mobile efforts (it’s a 3.0 version, according to Yang, which is a good move since Web 2.0–in general and in particular–has not been so kind to the Internet giant), as well as giving the audience a glimpse of some interesting new concepts related to its popular email program.

The front rows were so packed with top Yahoo execs–including President Sue Decker, as well as David Filo, Jeff Weiner, Brad Garlinghouse, Ash Patel, Dave Karnstedt, Bradley Horowitz, Hilary Schneider and even Chairman and former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel–that you had to wonder who was running the show back in Sunnyvale, Calif.

(I mean, say, if Google had decided to launch a sneak attack today with their bicycle brigade, it could have taken over Yahoo without a shot fired!)

Yang maintained a low-key tone throughout the presentation, as is his way (I kept imagining the performance being done by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, who would have sold it all hard until he popped a vein).

Nonetheless, Yang did get the message through that opening its platform up to third-party developers would be a big push in 2008 for Yahoo.

So, the widgets in the excellent mobile product, called Yahoo! Go 3.0, are laudable and much more innovative than anything out there, even though Yahoo has been too quiet about marketing its Yahoo! Go product until now.

But at CES, Yang brought Yahoo Connected Life Executive Vice President Marco Boerries (pictured here) out to show off the mobile apps, including one from MTV (Viacom head Philippe Dauman and MTV Networks head Judith McGrath were in the audience) that seemed fun.

More interesting was Yang’s presenting new concepts for its Yahoo Mail product, which will be more social, relevant and integrated. A lot of this functionality is already being used by the open-source email company Zimbra, which Yahoo recently acquired (and whose head Satish Dharmaraj I interviewed last week).

As I wrote in that piece, I love the innovations, including ranking of those you email with most frequently and instant mapping from email, as well as a plethora of great features for email.

So, one vexing part of Yang’s presentation was that this concept needs to become a reality tomorrow. He brought out Co-Founder and interim CTO Filo to basically promise “soon,” but I say: Make it snappy!

I know, we’re pushy when it comes to Yahoo, but it’s because we care!

Well, care is not the right word exactly, but we are certain that a powerful and pioneering company like Yahoo can out-innovate these Web 2.0 newbies who get ridiculous funding to make goofy widgets and have the nerve to call it a business.

Thus, we took the chance and his prone position after the speech surrounded by well-wishers to go up and say hello in person to Yang, whom BoomTown has known for longer than either of us would care to say.

And, miracle of miracles, Yang said it had been far too long since we had gotten together and agreed to meet in 2008, a meeting for which we have been asking and egregiously posting about forever, to no avail.

How much does BoomTown love CES? Not so much.

But if it gets me lunch with Yang, I love it. So, Jerry, it’s officially 2008 and I am waiting by the phone for your call.

Here is my video of parts of Yang’s keynote: