Context and intent shape your opinions for what words are acceptable and not, and certainly shape what entries are acceptable in the dictionary.
Its fine to have preferences (the fun of the thread!), but people can also narrow their focus into an unnecessarily prescriptive position.
Language is beautiful in its flexibility.
I generally refer to people I jam with by the name they introduced themselves with.
String cheese?
Stop hiding in my closet
musicians are so primadonna
I dont want to deal with them: better sample everything, it’s faster and more relaxing
oh yeah, because everyone samples us 
Oh my! I’m curious about this now 
So, I hear what you’re saying…others may call creative work “content” and I get that…
…but the word “content” when used to describe art, music, graphics, video, sound, etc, affirms and reinforces in the culture the increasingly blurring interrelationship between commercial advertising and art-for-art’s sake.
This position that art has taken, as a vehicle for advertisement, is not new. We all know about product placement in films and great artists doing covers for magazines and all that…but we’re all pushing so quickly and rather naively into this new territory freshly made available through social media technology, the “news feed”, behavior and communication tracking, feedback loops, etc. I don’t think the whistleblowers are audible at the moment amidst the din of plentiful financial opportunities for a new class of content creators and influencers.
I understand the role of “commercial art”…I love a well-crafted, clever, and relatable advertisement…but I never mistook a piece of art or music for a plea to make me purchase something…hehe YET. 
When people use the word content, they cede cultural territory and allow a huge forward push into the blurring of the line between art and advertisement.
and equally beautiful in its ability to bring forth the fruits of human progress through a shared understanding possible only via consensus on the meaning(s) of a word. 
I agree so much with all of what you said!
If I DJd, I feel like some temporary fun and cheeky DJ names to perform as these days would be:
DJ Misleading Thumbnail
DJ Content
DJ Clickbait
DJ Newsfeed
DJ Advertising Revenue
Sure! Consensus works both ways well beyond languages being living, well beyond organizations like L’Académie française. Life is a lot easier and more fruitful when being less of a prescriptivist ( or dictionary thumper, I suppose 
)
Many arguments about what is or what is not in absolute terms tend to prioritize one usage and ignore other valid ones. The internet for all its benefits gives people the opportunity to exhaust their perceived “opponents” by missing the point and arguing for hours in their underwear.
To that end I definitely rather preface my preferred usage and context and do not begrudge someone else how they feel about their own artistic identity or employment in more commercial forms. Each weirdo is their own person!
And yes, definitely agree with your post. Technical “content” and how someone sees themselves engaged with creativity and chooses to represent their acceptance or rejection of the non-artistic process, sometimes creative people may still call themselves “content creators” in defeatism, sometimes self-deprecatingly, sometimes to save time in explaining to non-creatives who do not want an infodump.
But the rejection of drinking from the pressurized firehose of “content” spewing noise into the world is somewhat political, somewhat an attempt to elevate and acknowledge consciousness over the regular release schedule and SEO tricks that artists still may use from time to time to increase awareness of their work.
The differentiation can draw a line in the (indistinct) boundary between amateur and professional, not even necessarily between Patron and ad/sponsored content but between how they value their hard work without gaining traction by appealing to “dark patterns” and with conscious effort.
Also indistinct is what is “organic” and what is “effective” for the artist, because you may want to grab all the industrial music fans but not the crowd that’d otherwise be watching Minecraft/reaction/unboxing videos.
In the context that you describe, “content” is a word used by marketeers or stakeholders for that which they don’t really (want or need to) understand. So if someone sees your music as content, they’ll see it as ancillary to their product. Nevertheless, that does not make you less of a musician.
I mean, that’s the point of differentiation!
What matters is how the person sees themselves or wishes to contextualize their work.
“fodder creator”
There is only dysfunction; communication breakdown (this and many threads people disagreeing on the meaning of a word which has a acceptable definition) But this is further complicated by the effect society has on the meaning of words over time. It’s always interesting to look through old dictionaries to see this phenomenon, and how our society evolves to promote simple mindedness, or a type homogenization of thought or self expression. Scary stuff…
A definition is not a preference. These two terms have distinct meaning and if a society is to achieve the kind of justice most people wish for it would begin with effective communication and emphasis not on the word but it’s meaning. So in the context of words having meaning and this thread, the “preference” and narrow focus is to use the word musician however one wishes and regardless if there is a word already that defines this skill set; producer. And this preference is to disregard and even insult those who maintain the difference between the skill sets; labels presented in this question atop this thread.
Music is a culture older than any religion, and has provided more solace and inner peace too. All this digital music is beautiful, but it is a different thing entirely than the heart generated drum beat, and the human voice unfiltered. Music is what it is because of the definition between beats and tones. Communication is no different in this respect. Words make poems because they (words) have meaning that we understand. And even though we can use words in art, that too; art is disgusted from labor for good reason- because all thing are not the same. Words help us express, it’s important we share the understanding of what they mean if we what to overcome petty disputes.
content
there is a philosophical problem.
i started banging the drums even before Berners-Lee invented WorldWideWeb (that brought to us the whole concept of „content“).
so, when i’m banging the drums, it’s not content – at least because this prqactice existed before the container for a few thousand years.
You don’t get to define all meanings (certainly those mutually accepted by others) of a word, and trying to dominate through force of will alone or waving a dictionary over organic, living usage of language is causing blockage on your end.
Flexibility helps more than posing as an authority on meaning, so if you’re concerned about being understood, you need to listen more than tell others what they believe.
Trying to be over-prescriptive does not help understanding and reduce confusion, it just imposes one absolutist take that is unnecessary and unhelpful to the aggregate.
Edit Not even really intending to assume bad faith here in any characterization, with less charged takes it seems easier to acknowledge different prisms or takes on meaning. The stakes here are lowwwwww
When I play live with my Elektron boxes I typically say I “perform electronic music”.
I’m not playing a set of other people’s songs and creating transitions like a DJ would.
When I think of the word “producer” I think of someone in a studio sitting in front of giant computer monitors using a DAW to record tracks of “real” instruments (vocals, guitar, bass, etc) for a client. This is not what I do at all. When I do record my tracks they are single takes of a live performance on an Elektron box into a hardware recorder, so a recording of a live performance.
I am also a musician in the sense that I play “real” instruments like piano and guitar, but these aren’t currently incorporated into my recorded tracks. Sometimes I accompany my Elektron box tracks with real instruments; and people dont think I’m a DJ then, but my instead think I’m playing to a prerecorded backing track or something like that. What words people use to describe me entirely depends on their level of exposure to electronic music.
Aside: If I define “musician” as “plays a musical instrument” I have to wonder if Elektron boxes are instruments at all or should be classified as a “hardware audio workstation” or something like that. I mean, do you really say that you “play” the Digitakt? I more often find myself saying that I “use” the Digitakt to create music.
So all in all, I’d say I’m more of a “performer” than a producer, dj, or musician when I use my Elektron boxes.
I like your description.
Though, of course, there are always grey zones, such as Mix Master Mike, DJ Qbert and the like… Damn virtuosos crushed to pieces the idea that DJs are not instrument players, to me.
Yeah totally agree. Some take traditional ideas to a whole other level 
Perhaps you should consider the cases that you’ve quoted as also being musicians or instrument players, in addition to their “DJness”.