Robin Finck members Josh Freese and Alessandro Cortini. In November 2008 Guns N' Roses' long-awaited album "Chinese Democracy" was released. Finck has a co-writing credit on the song "Better", which was later released as a single. He also played guitar on every track, performed 7 of the guitar solos and has additional credits for keyboards, arrangements and pre-production. He chose to remain with NIN after the album's release and, on March 21, 2009, was officially replaced as the lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses by guitarist DJ Ashba. The official Guns N' Roses website states that "Robin continues to be part of
Chinese Democracy audiences, bountiful royalties, escalating ambitions and dangerously open-ended deadlines", the music business in the early 21st century had become "leaner" and "leakier". In a 2015 review inducting the album into their "New Classic Albums" category, Artistdirect praised the album, calling it "a timeless work of art". Best Buy purchased 1.3 million copies of "Chinese Democracy" from UMG before release and pledged not to return unsold copies. The album was released on November 22, 2008, in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It was released the following day worldwide, except for the United Kingdom, where it was released on November 24. "Chinese Democracy"