The winner was Ukraine with the song "Wild Dances", performed by Ruslana who wrote it with her husband Oleksandr Ksenofontov.

Istanbul was chosen as the host city of the 2004 edition following Turkey's victory in the 2003 contest in Riga, Latvia with Sertab Erener's "Everyway That I Can".

Originally the Mydonose Showland, an entertainment center in the form of a giant pyramid tent near Atatürk International Airport, was chosen by host broadcaster TRT to host the event,[2] but the venue was later changed to the Abdi İpekçi Arena as the contest approached due to its bigger capacity.

[1] The Mydonose Showland, later renamed the Istanbul Show Center, was demolished in 2009 after a fire destroyed it in April that year.

Under this new format, byes into the final were given to the 'Big 4'; France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom (as the largest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union) and the ten highest placed finishers in the 2003 contest.

Andorra, Albania, Belarus and Serbia and Montenegro participated in the contest for the first time, with Monaco returning after a 25-year absence.

Luxembourg were due to return after an absence of 11 years, but later pulled out after money issues arose between RTL and the EBU.

Monaco's televoting results in the semi-final were rendered invalid and a back-up jury had to be used, but no problems occurred in the final.

After all performances were completed, each country opened their phone lines to allow their viewers to vote for their favourite song.

Before 2004 every point was repeated in French and English, but due to 36 countries voting, and more in years to come, in 2004 to save time the hosts only re-read each score in one language.

[1] There were technical problems when in a short hiatus halfway through the songs used for the advertising break the hosts tried to contact various parties in Europe.

A final minor hiccup occurred when, on her way to present the winner the trophy, Sertab Erener got her shoe stuck in a speaker grill by the side of the stage and had to be freed by stagehands.

An hour after the semi-final had been aired, the European Broadcasting Union discovered that there had been problems with the vote counting in Monaco and Croatia.

Later, an official EBU statement read that there had been technical problems at the side of the Croatian mobile service provider, who neglected to delete the illegal votes from the results.

The Marcel Bezençon Awards, organised since 2002 by Sweden's then-Head of Delegation and 1992 representative Christer Björkman, and 1984 winner Richard Herrey, honours songs in the contest's final.

The album featured all 36 songs that entered in the 2004 contest, including the semi-finalists that failed to qualify into the grand final.