Timothy White, 50, Billboard Editor in Chief

Timothy White, the editor in chief of Billboard magazine, died on Thursday afternoon at the magazine's Manhattan offices. He was 50, lived in Boston and commuted to New York City.

The cause was apparently a heart attack, according to billboard.com.

Mr. White, who always wore a bow tie in public, wrote books about musicians and was the host of a syndicated radio series. As the editor of Billboard, the music-business trade magazine, he kept the magazine independent of the industry it covered. In a weekly column, he was often sharply critical of music he found offensive, of the way recording companies treated and of record labels' approach to the Internet.

Mr. White was born in Paterson, N.J., played drums in rock bands and graduated from Fordham University. He worked for The Associated Press from 1972 to 1976, writing about sports and entertainment. He became a senior editor at the rock magazine Crawdaddy in 1977, and then a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine from 1979 to 1982.

Mr. White wrote extensive profiles of musicians, often interviewing their parents. He also interviewed musicians for his radio series, called ''Timothy White's Rock Stars'' or ''The Timothy White Sessions,'' which was nationally syndicated.

Mr. White's books include ''Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley'' (Henry Holt, 1983), ''The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience'' (Henry Holt, 1995) and ''Long Ago and Far Away: James Taylor, His Life and Music'' (Omnibus Press, 2001). He won three Ascap-Deems Taylor Awards for music journalism: for his book ''Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews'' (Henry Holt, 1990), for his Billboard column, ''Music to My Ears,'' and for a 1993 profile of George Harrison. In 1999 he was given a Grammy Heroes award.

He is survived by his wife, Judith; his twin sons, Christopher and Alexander; his brothers, Denis, Douglas, John and David; and his sisters, Amy Reiss and Gloriann Gallagher.