The Quark Matter conference is the ‘meeting of record’ for the field of relativistic heavy-ion physics. Each such conference is filled with exciting new data frequently presented to the world for the first time. However, the field also makes significant progress during the 18 months between Quark Matter conferences. Such progress is summarized in a single talk near the beginning of the conference and sets the stage for the newest data and discoveries. This paper is the experimental summary of selected results published in journals and presented at conferences between the end of QM2002 and the beginning of QM2004.