In their music contest, Apollo and Marsyas took turns on their instruments: Apollo on his stringed cithara and Marsyas on his double pipe aulos. Although Apollo is the god of music, he faced a worthy opponent. Musically speaking, that is. Were Marsyas truly an opponent worthy of a god, there would be little more to be said.
It may have been the Muses who were to judge the wind vs. string contest; otherwise, it was Midas, king of Phrygia. Marsyas and Apollo were almost equal for the first round, and so the Muses judged Marsyas victor, but Apollo had not yet given up. Depending on the variation you are reading, either Apollo turned his instrument upside down to play the same tune, or he sang to the accompaniment of his lyre. Since Marsyas could neither blow into the wrong and widely separate ends of his aulos nor sing -- even assuming his voice could have been a match for that of the god of music -- while blowing into his pipes, he did not stand a chance, in either version.
Apollo won and claimed the prize of the victor that they had agreed upon before beginning the contest. Apollo could do whatever he wished to Marsyas. So Marsyas paid for his hubris by being pinned to a tree and flayed alive by Apollo, who perhaps intended to turn his skin into a wine flask.
In addition to the variations in the story in terms of where the double flute came from, the identity of the judge(s), and the method Apollo used to defeat the contender, there is another important variation. Sometimes it is the god Pan rather than Marsyas who competes with his Uncle Apollo.
In the version where Midas judges:
"Midas, Mygdonian king, son of the Mother goddess from Timolus was taken as judge at the time when Apollo contested with Marsyas, or Pan, on the pipes. When Timolus gave the victory to Apollo, Midas said it should rather have been given to Marsyas. Then Apollo angrily said to Midas: 'You will have ears to match the mind you have in judging,' and with these words he caused him to have ass's ears."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 191 (From the Theoi page on Marsyas)
Much like the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock, sporting a stocking cap regardless of the weather whenever he had to mingle with 20th Century Earthlings, Midas hid his ears under a conical cap named for his and Marsyas' homeland of Phrygia. It looked like the cap worn by Roman freed slaves, the pileus or liberty cap.
Sources on the contest between Apollo and Marsyas include: The Bibliotheke of (Pseudo-) Apollodorus, Herodotus, the Laws and Euthydemus of Plato, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch's On Music, Strabo, Pausanias, Aelian's Historical Miscellany, and (Pseudo-) Hyginus, according to the Theoi article on Marsyas.
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