Repeat volta: how many times to repeat?

[Roberto Leibman]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before in some other way I could not 
quite figure out.
I'm a bit new at both lilypond and music notation in general... my 
excuse? I'm a drummer.

I want to mark a bar repeated 5 times. What I've often see are the volta 
marks, with a little number at top of the closing bar stating the number 
of repeats (e.g. 5x). Why isn't this number automatically placed? How is 
a player supposed to know how many times a piece of music is supposed to 
be played without it? Am I missing something?

Example:

\repeat volta 5 {hh8 hh hh hh hh hh hh hh}

I could use repeat percent, or repeat unfold, but then each bar is 
"spelled out" and the song takes 4 pages instead of 2.

Thanks,

Roberto