Honest question: Where is the line drawn between music producers and musicians? Playing instruments? Using samples?

Areas of responsibility. The producer is the person ultimately responsible for the output. You can be a producer and not know a lick about good musicianship or play an instrument, but you have good taste and can use tools (samples, software, etc) to take what others have done to make something others will like/use/pay for/etc.

You can be a software engineer and not know a lick about syntax or write algorithms, but you have good intuition and can use tools (LLMs, autocomplete, etc) to take what others have done to make something others will like/use/pay for/etc.

Why use tools? Just be a product manager and you'd attain the same result.

If you can put together (tasteful) songs by using tools like samples and software, aren't you a musician then? Many would consider tools like DAWs instruments, so mastering one of those would be considered playing an instrument, at least for those people.

> Many would consider tools like DAWs instruments...

People can stretch the definition however they like since there is no hard acceptance of where the line is drawn. Sure the general term musician means a person who plays/creates music. A person who hums can be a musician.

However in my own opinion, I disagree. DAWs are not instruments in themselves. The main functionality of a DAW is in recording, arranging, and mixing audio. They are the digital equivilent of a tape recorder and manual cut/splice process. They have evolved to include many software add-on emulations of instruments and packages around the production process: synths, pianos, mastering tools, additional recording tools, etc. Using a DAW does not make you a musician, but using provided instrumentation in a DAW can make you become a musician.